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THE BUILDING 
OF THE CHURCH 

CHARLES E.JEFFERSON 





Class. 

Book 

Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH 



BOOKS BY 
CHARLES E. JEFFERSON, D.D., LL.D. 

THINGS FUNDAMENTAL 

THE CHARACTER OF JESUS 

DOCTRINE AND DEED 

THE NEW CRUSADE 

MY FATHER'S BUSINESS 

THE MINISTER AS PROPHET 

QUIET HINTS TO GROWING PREACHERS 

QUIET TALKS TO EARNEST PEOPLE 

TALKS ON HIGH THEMES 

THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH 



THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH 




CHARLES E/ JEFFERSON 

PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE 
NEW YORK CITY 



Nefo gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1910 

All rights reserved 



5 V 43. 
3> 



a 



Copyright, 1910, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1910. 



NorinootJ IPressg 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CI. A 271 6 



The lectures of this volume were delivered before 
the Divinity School of Yale University, in the months 
of April and May, 19 10, on the Lyman Beecher 
Foundation. 



CONTENTS 

LECTURES PAGE 

I. The Church Building Idea in the New 

Testament i 

II. Building the Brotherhood .... 41 

III. Building the Individual .... 79 

IV. Building Moods and Tempers . . .117 
V. Building Thrones 155 

VI. Building the Holy Catholic Church . igi 

VII. Building the Plan 231 

VIII. The Building of the Builder . . . 269 



LECTURE I 

THE CHURCH BUILDING IDEA 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 



THE CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 

The sovereign interest which this lectureship 
holds in its eye — the work of Preaching — has not 
been overlooked in the choosing of my subject. I 
do not forget that I am speaking to men who are in- 
terested supremely in the art of preaching, but I 
invite you to approach the subject through the 
Christian church. After so many illustrious teach- 
ers have spoken on the subject, it would be indeed 
presumptuous for any man at this late date to at- 
tempt to offer additional suggestion or instruction, 
were it not that the subject of preaching lies, like the 
New Jerusalem, foursquare, with an ideal number of 
gates on every side, through any one of which the 
lecturer may make his way into the heart of the im- 
perial theme. The traditional method of approach 
has been through the pulpit, an institution estab- 
lished for the proclamation of the Christian message; 
and when this method is adopted it is natural that the 
topic uppermost in the discussion should be either 
the message, its subject matter and its manner of 
treatment, or the messenger, his personality and 



4 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

character, his pulpit elocution and gestures, his 
literary habit and style. This method of approach 
is the direct and obvious one, and is not without great 
rewards. Like all methods, however, it has its 
limitations, and carries with it certain perils which, 
unless guarded against, are likely to work mischief. 
It is easily possible to think of the work of preaching 
too narrowly, to imagine that it is a matter concern- 
ing supremely one individual — the man in the 
pulpit. One may come under the sway of the idea 
that in any discussion of the work of preaching the 
preacher himself is the primary, if not the sole, object 
of study, that it is upon his mental endowments and 
spiritual attainments that the success of the sermon 
chiefly depends, and that in the education, of minis- 
ters attention ought to be jealously focussed on those 
disciplines by which the preacher is most surely 
fitted to deliver acceptably a pulpit discourse. 

But preaching, when we look at it long enough, is 
seen to involve, not one man only, but a society of 
men. No preacher lives to himself nor dies to himself. 
He is an organ functioning in an organism, rinding his 
life in the vital relations by which he is bound to other 
lives. His endowments and attainments are only 
one factor in the work of preaching, another factor 
of no less importance being the attainments and en- 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 5 

dowments of the Christian society. The sermon is 
not the voice of an isolated individual, but the utter- 
ance of a body of men baptized into the name of 
Jesus. The sermon comes not out of the preacher 
alone, but out of the church. The preacher gives 
back what he receives. He cannot feed himself. 
He is nourished by his environment — the family 
of Christ. He cannot shape himself. He is moulded 
by the body of believers. He cannot grow in isola- 
tion. He is a plant dependent on the atmosphere 
and the weather, both of which are largely the crea- 
tion of the Christian people. The church cannot 
wisely be ignored in any comprehensive study of the 
preacher's work, nor can it be shoved into the back- 
ground without loss. The traditional method has 
been to reach the church through the preacher. Let 
us in this course of lectures try to reach the preacher 
through the church. It has become the fashion to 
come to the congregation through the sermon. It 
may prove advantageous to come to the sermon 
through the congregation. The church is older than 
the pulpit, the congregation antedates the preacher. 
It was not the pulpit which created the church, but 
the church which created the pulpit. It is not the 
preacher who keeps alive the Christian society; it is 
the Christian society which keeps alive the preacher. 



6 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

In an earnest study, therefore, of preaching, we 
are justified in beginning with the church, the 
spiritual society through which the preacher first 
came to be, and by which preaching is ever nourished 
and kept vital. 

There are special reasons why this method of ap- 
proach is just now not only opportune, but likely 
to prove most rewarding, one of which is that the 
church is in many quarters thrown into the shadow. 
Owing to the multiplication of organizations en- 
gaged in ethical and philanthropic work, the 
church does not loom so large in the public eye as 
formerly. Surrounded by a host of religious and 
semireligious bodies, it is partially hidden by 
them, and its glory once unique and splendidly 
impressive, is somewhat shorn. Moreover, there 
is a new world view point, and everything has come 
to judgment. All the fundamental institutions of 
humanity — the family, the state, the church — 
have been thrown into the crucible and are being 
tried by fire. There are voices declaring that the 
family as hitherto existing is a fountain flowing 
plagues and curses, to be superseded by something 
better ; and that the state, as the world has thus 
far known it, is an instrument of injustice and op- 
pression, to be thrown upon the scrap heap of worn- 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 7 

out institutions. In an age so radical, it is not to 
be wondered at that the church of Christ should be 
scrutinized with hostile eyes and classed by many 
among those curious organisms which have a trick 
of surviving their usefulness. There is a great 
company of thoughtful people for whom the 
Christian church has no significance. Some of them 
ignore it altogether, others notice it only to smile 
at it as a survival of a waning superstition, or to 
curse it as an obstacle to progress. To others it 
had a place; but to-day, alas, its creeds are all out- 
grown, its methods antiquated, its power is dwin- 
dling, and the wisdom of perpetuating it in its 
present form is questionable. The seat of the 
scornful is crowded, and so also is the seat of the 
mournful, the seat wherein congregate the good 
people who are always lamenting the decay of the 
pulpit and the decline of the church. When they 
look backward, they see pulpit giants; when 
they look round them, they see pulpit dwarfs. 
The church was mighty once, but not now. These 
are the people who write newspaper articles on 
"the decadence of the pulpit/' who publish novels 
showing that if Christlike people desire to ac- 
complish anything worth while, they must cut 
loose from the church, who deliver lectures in which 



8 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

the most sparkling paragraphs are gibes at the 
preachers and thrusts at the church members. 
The most vigorous and plausible criticism of our 
day is directed, not against the person of Jesus nor 
his ethical teaching, but against the institution 
which bears his name. It is a good time for all who 
intend to preach to think about the church. 

Many preachers are thinking little about it, 
and others are thinking about it mistakenly. The 
very word "church" is in many pulpits tabooed. 
There are clergymen who preach no longer about 
the church. Their favorite theme is the "Kingdom 
of God." An influential American theologian, 
in a valuable treatise on theology, picks up the 
word "church" only to drop it, using in its place 
"The Christian People." An English preacher, 
whose praise is in all the churches, and who although 
dead yet speaks, keeps saying in one of his most 
popular volumes that it is to be regretted that 
Paul did not say less about the church and more 
about the Kingdom, because the characteristic 
product of the church is ecclesiastics, whereas the 
characteristic product of the Kingdom is philan- 
thropists. An eminent German theologian has 
informed us that the church is not an essential 
part of the religion of Jesus. Christianity needs, he 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 9 

says, no dogma, no organization, and no ritual. 
Christianity, when rightly understood, is simply a 
filial disposition in the heart. When those who sit 
in the seats of the mighty speak after this fashion, 
it is not to be wondered at that men lower down 
begin to think of the church with a slackened 
reverence and to speak of it with a diminished 
enthusiasm. The church has to many Christians 
become an object to be apologized for, and has 
ceased to be an institution to be sacrificed for and 
loved. There is no doctrine of the Christian creed 
in which it is so easy for young men to-day to go 
astray as the doctrine of the Christian church. 

The effect of this widespread scepticism in regard 
to the church is manifesting itself increasingly. 
The diminished attendance at theological seminaries 
on both sides of the sea is a subject of troubled 
discussion, and many an explanation has been 
offered. It is singular that one of the root causes 
has been generally overlooked altogether. Young 
men in diminished numbers are preparing them- 
selves for the ministry, largely because the im- 
pression is abroad that the pulpit is in a state of 
decay, that ministers are no longer men of influence, 
that the church is obsolescent, and that there are 
other and better ways in which a Christian man can 



IO CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

make his life count in the work of social betterment. 
Our age is not a whit more materialistic than all 
other ages have been. The young men of our day 
have as high ideals as young men have ever had, 
their impulses are as generous and noble, their 
faith in Christ is as deep and secure, their ambition 
to serve humanity has never been surpassed; but 
never have men been so practical as now. They 
want opportunity to do something worth while, they 
desire to make their lives count for the utmost 
possible, and many of them hesitate to enter the 
ministry, because they have heard it said by 
Christian men — it may be by a Christian college 
president, or a Christian college professor, or a 
Christian editor, or a Christian business man — 
that the pulpit is a waning power, that it offers 
opportunities for service far inferior to those 
offered in other fields. Many a young man has 
recently turned his back on the ministry because he 
was unwilling to consecrate his life to the propping 
up of an institution which, in the estimation of so 
many Christian men in whose judgment he has 
confidence, is anaemic and likely to collapse. It 
is chiefly because the church of God as a divine 
and mighty and indispensable institution has fallen 
into disrepute, that we find ourselves facing the 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT II 

question, "How can we increase the number of 
candidates for the ministry?" 

It is sad to see a man turning away from 
the ministry because he does not understand the 
church, but it is tragic to see one entering the 
ministry with a wrong attitude to the church. 
Young ministers sometimes look upon the church 
as a necessary evil, an inherited encumbrance, a 
sort of device by which preachers are handicapped 
in their movements and held back from largest 
usefulness. Men of this type are eager to get at 
what they call the world. Their desire is to re- 
construct the social order. They want to do 
things on a broad scale. To deal with so small and 
insignificant a body as a church seems parochial 
and belittling. All they want is a pulpit, a place 
in which to stand and thunder forth their message. 
They eye church officials with suspicion. They 
would rather work alone. They are sorry they 
must stay in a church building. A theatre would 
suit them better. As for pastoral visitation, they 
abhor it. It eats up time which ought to be given 
to the proclamation of ideas and the correction of 
evils. To be sure, a church has its uses. It can 
furnish the minister's salary and pay the sexton, 
but, outside of this, its usefulness is problematic. 



12 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

Ordinarily it is in the way, and time spent upon it 
might better be otherwise employed. When a 
minister of this stripe goes into a parish the first 
man he visits is the printer. He believes in 
printer's ink. Printer's ink will let the people know 
he is there. He does not know that a living 
church is better for advertising purposes than all 
the printing presses in the town. He scatters cards 
to reach the masses. He has yet to learn that the 
preacher best reaches the masses who knows best 
how to reach his church. He is furious to get at 
the crowd, and in order to get at it he is willing to 
trample on his church. It is as if a school-teacher in 
order to educate a community should turn his back 
on his school, or a physician in order to heal the 
town should ignore his hospital, or that a general 
in haste to annihilate the enemy should do away 
with his army. He burns to reconstruct the world, 
not suspecting that the particular section of the 
world which first needs reconstruction at his 
hands is his own church. He is burdened with the 
conviction that he is ordained to fight the world, 
the flesh, and the devil, and in his innocence he does 
not know that all these are waiting for him in his 
church. 

If it is a blunder to ignore the church in an effort 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 13 

to reach the masses, it is a more serious blunder to 
slight the church in one's direct dealings with it. 
Some ministers take hold of a church as though 
it were a lump of putty or a piece of wood to be 
shaped at their will. They do not give it credit for 
having a soul of its own. They begin at once to 
reorganize it. They set out before breakfast 
to make it all over. Nothing about it suits them. 
The Sunday-school is on a wrong basis. The 
young people's society has faulty methods. The 
Woman's Missionary Circle has an antiquated 
constitution. Even the Cradle Roll must have 
a new set of by-laws. All these changes must be 
made immediately. The new minister does not 
know that the church has a disposition and temper- 
ament of its own, that its personality is as distinct 
and solid as his, that it is an organism with traditions 
which are sacred and customs which are hallowed, 
with notions and whims that must be respected, and 
with idiosyncrasies which cannot safely be ignored. 
Blessed is the preacher who realizes that he is only 
a sojourner as all his fathers were. He stands in the 
line of a long succession. Other men have labored 
and he is entering into their labors. It is not for 
him to start out as though the world were just 
beginning. The church was there before he was 



14 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

born. It will be there after he is dead. He is not a 
clerical Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. The 
shore is covered with human tracks. If he is a man 
of sense he will take note of them, and observe the 
direction in which men have been moving. The 
first thing in the town for a preacher to take notice 
of is his church. Let him begin at once to study 
it, to strive to understand it, to come into sympathy 
with it, to plan for it, to render himself useful to 
it, to make himself a part of it, and in this way he 
will come to love it. When he once loves it, he 
will possess the first requisite of a successful preacher. 
If it is hazardous to slight the church in the 
work of administration, it is fatal to ignore it in 
the work of preaching. Young ministers are often 
rich in note-books when they go into their first 
parish, and they begin to work out of their note- 
books toward the church. This is a blunder and 
often leads the saints to say sundry uncomplimen- 
tary things about theological seminaries. Preach- 
ers should work from their parish toward their 
note-books. It is the church which must deter- 
mine the character of the pulpit instruction and the 
sequence of it. The church is a growing organism 
and the preacher must know the stage of its devel- 
opment before he can feed it. He cannot use the 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 1 5 

material in his note-books before he finds out 
whether that is the material which is just now 
needed. Possibly the contents of his notes may 
be wet sawdust, possibly gunpowder. They may 
dampen and deaden, or they may cause an ex- 
plosion. Men sometimes are blown out of their 
pulpit by working from their note-books toward the 
church, instead of from the church toward their 
note-books. Let a man find out what the church 
is able to digest and assimilate, and then go to his 
books in search of it. A physician always looks at 
his patient before he goes to the medicine chest. 
A wise preacher begins, not with his books, but with 
his church. 

The old question of ministerial liberty is always 
coming up to torment us, and the scandals caused 
by preachers insisting on what they call their rights 
are among the most vexing with which the church 
has to deal. Every Christian minister is of course 
free, but freedom has its laws. Liberty is precious, 
but it has its limitations. Because a minister is free 
it does not follow that he has a right to proclaim 
from the pulpit everything he reads or everything 
which he happens to be thinking. Certain men 
are always getting confused at this point. Their 
bewilderment is due to a forgetting of the church. 



1 6 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

A man comes to think of himself as being the church. 
He forgets that the faith was delivered to the 
saints — the entire body of the Lord's followers. 
He is only one man among many. A theological 
education does not give him the right to set himself 
in a class apart, and to count himself independent 
of the Christian brotherhood. He is not a pulpit 
pope. He has his rights, but so also have other 
Christians. He wishes to be free, so also do his 
brethren. There is a liberty of hearing as well as 
a liberty of speaking. In asserting what he calls 
his freedom, he may rob others of the liberties 
which belong to them as Christian men. The 
church of Christ stands in the world as the ordained 
teacher of definite conceptions of God and man, 
of duty and destiny, of Jesus of Nazareth and the 
Holy Spirit, of the church and the sacraments; 
and if a preacher in the course of his mental evolu- 
tion comes to reject any of the beliefs which the 
church counts fundamental, there is nothing for 
him to do but to retire. To promise to teach a 
certain set of beliefs and then proceed to repudiate 
them, is not exercising the liberty of prophesying, 
but simply failing to keep one's word. One is al- 
ways at liberty to withdraw from the Christian 
pulpit as soon as he has surrendered the Christian 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 1 7 

creed. The man who wants to know what are his 
liberties as a teacher must work, not from himself 
toward the church, but from the church toward 
himself. 

Sometimes it is not so much a question of preach- 
ing fundamental doctrine as of proclaiming certain 
ethical principles, and attacking certain undoubted 
moral evils. Here again the preacher must begin 
by establishing right relations between himself and 
his church. It is often said that under our American 
plan of ministerial support, a preacher is constantly 
tempted to hold back unpalatable teaching, and is 
in danger of degenerating into a flatterer or dema- 
gogue. The danger is real, but can easily be 
escaped. If a man has a contemptuous view of his 
church he is well-nigh certain to be afraid of it. 
But love casts out fear. If a man loves his church 
and proves his love by his life, he can say to it 
anything which is proper for a Christian teacher to 
say to his pupils, anything which it is fitting for a 
Christian man to say to his friends. The preachers 
who get into trouble by talking plainly to their 
people are as a rule preachers who do not love their 
churches. If a man stays in his study through the 
week, wishing he could get a call to a larger church, 
secretly despising the flock of which he is the ap- 



1 8 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

pointed shepherd, and then goes into the pulpit on 
the Lord's day, and thunders against his people's 
sins, there may be a storm, and there ought to be. 
No man has a right to chide or condemn men, 
unless he has won the right by loving them. It is a 
clear vision of the church which preachers most 
need when they come to deal with questions of 
liberty in the proclamation of their message. 

Another outstanding phenomenon of our age is 
the shortening of pastorates. This is due in part 
to hazy conceptions of the preacher's supreme 
work. If a man thinks his mission in the world is 
the delivering of sermons, he is likely to want to pass 
from parish to parish, staying only long enough in 
each pulpit to exhaust his sermonic stock. Such a 
man is a sermonizer, but not a church builder. He 
has been trained to write sermons, but not in- 
structed in the art of church building. He does not 
know what the supreme work of a minister of Christ 
is. He does not know what preaching is for. His 
knowledge does not run beyond the A B C's of his 
calling. He thinks of himself as a man whose sole, 
business is to convert sinners. Having persuaded 
sinners to say they want to follow Christ, and 
having induced them to unite with the church, his 
labor, he thinks, is ended. It does not occur to 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 1 9 

him that the most difficult part of the minister's 
work is with people after they have joined the 
church. The minister is a teacher, and a teacher's 
real work begins only after the pupils are enrolled. 
He is the general of an army, and a general's 
critical task is drilling his men after they have en- 
listed, and massing them in such ways as to conquer 
the foe. He is a master-builder, and his task is not 
simply collecting material, but shaping it into a 
structure which shall become a shrine of the Eternal. 
The crowning and crucial work of a minister is not 
conversion, but church building. A man who does 
nothing but convert men is an evangelist, and 
should never be intrusted with a church. His 
work is of value, but is easily overestimated. He 
deserves a high place, but not the highest. The 
highest place belongs to the man who, year after year, 
in the same parish, instructs men in the high and 
difficult art of living together, and trains them by 
long and patient processes in the work of bringing 
spiritual forces to bear upon the moral problems of 
the community. The work of the evangelist is 
necessarily spectacular, and often bewitches the 
eyes of men who are young. Evangelism seems, 
sometimes, to young men a more Christlike and 
sacrificial form of service than the work performed 



20 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

in the course of the ordinary ministry; but the fact 
is that the work of the evangelist is not nearly so 
taxing either upon brain or heart as is the work per- 
formed by a man who through a long series of years 
gives himself devotedly to the soul-exhausting labor 
of knitting the lives of men together and building 
them up in righteousness. Young' preachers in 
quiet and obscure parishes, reading of the exploits 
of famous evangelists moving in triumphal proces- 
sion across the land, sometimes grow discontented, 
and wish that they too might leap upon a larger 
stage and play a thrilling part in the great drama 
of world redemption. But it should not be for- 
gotten that it is not simply the men who scatter 
seed, but the men also who cultivate the grain and 
garner the harvest who win the right to a place 
among the world's benefactors. Converting men 
only once amounts ordinarily to little. They 
must be converted many times. Faces must be 
turned in the right direction, but what avails this, 
unless hesitant and stumbling feet are trained to 
walk toward the goal. The preacher who induces 
men to turn to God and join the church does well, 
but his supreme work as a Christian preacher is 
building converts into a brotherhood. The young 
preacher who at the end of the second year in a 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 21 

parish says, " My work is done," does not know what 
he is saying. It may be that his stock of star 
sermons is exhausted, or that the available outside 
sinners have all handed in their names; but if he 
understood a minister's mission, he would see that 
his work has scarcely begun. In two years a man 
can learn something of the nature of the material 
with which he has to deal, but the critical and 
arduous work of building lies still ahead of him. 
No matter how long he stays, there will be more 
work to do than there was in sight at the beginning. 
Men who engage in the building of the church know 
that the work is never done. 

One cannot help wondering if not a little of the 
restlessness and discontent which nil the hearts of 
so many pastors is not due to confused notions of 
their relation to the church. Many a preacher has 
a hungry heart because he has never yet gotten 
close enough to his people. Preaching is a lonely 
business. A man sweats blood in preaching, and 
oftentimes the nerves are left unstrung. How can a 
preacher do his work except in an atmosphere made 
warm by Christian affection ? In the earlier years 
it is exhilarating to preach, because one finds relief 
in self-expression. But as the years go on, there 
is less delight in the mere act of saying things, 



22 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

and the heart craves more and more the fellowship 
of kindred minds. A preacher who does not love 
his church, and whom his church does not love, 
is of all men most pitiable. Many a minister's 
career would have been a different one, had he only 
come to his pulpit by way of his church. 

Turning now from the voices of "an age which 
has become confused in its idea of the church, 
let us open the scriptures and purge our eyes by 
gazing upon the church as the writers of the New 
Testament saw it. With whom may we more 
fittingly begin than with that preacher without a 
peer — St. Paul ? In genius and consecration, in 
passion and power, no ambassador of Christ in the 
long roll of the Christian centuries has written his 
name above the name of the man of Tarsus. Like 
many a modern critic, Paul at one time looked upon 
the church contemptuously. The prophet of Naza- 
reth, having run his short and ignominious career, 
had vanished, leaving behind him a company of 
fanatics to be resisted and if possible annihilated. 
The fiery disciple of Gamaliel breathed forth 
threatenings and slaughter against this novel and 
accursed form of heresy. But one day, when 
his hand was uplifted ready to strike the little 
church in Damascus, Paul heard Jesus saying, 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 23 

"Why persecutest thou me?" In this question 
there came a twofold revelation — a revelation of 
the character of Jesus, and a revelation of the 
relation of Jesus to his church. To his amazement 
Paul discovered that Jesus is not only living, but 
that he is identified with his church, and that it is 
impossible to slight, despise, or oppose the church 
without wounding the Son of God himself. From 
that hour to his death Paul knew but two sovereign 
themes — one was Jesus Christ, the other was the 
church. The only sin whose memory burned like 
fire in his heart was the sin which he had committed 
against the church. When you find him with his 
face in the dust, it is his persecution of the church 
which he is bewailing. When he declares he is the 
chief of sinners and that he is not worthy to be 
called an apostle, it is because the recollection of 
his sin against the church rolls over him like a flood. 
When you seek him at his highest, jubilant and 
enraptured, you find him thinking of the church. 
It is a subject never absent from his mind. He 
ransacks his vocabulary in search of figures by which 
adequately to image forth his idea of the church's 
character and mission. Sometimes he thinks of it 
as the household of faith — the family of Jehovah. 
At other times he sees it as the temple of God, the 



24 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

very seat and shrine of the Eternal. Again it 
presents itself to him as the body of Christ, the or- 
ganism in which Christ's spirit operates, the instru- 
ment by which the soul of Christ works. Still again 
it rises before him beautiful and radiant as a woman 
in the hour of her greatest loveliness, the bride 
of the world's Redeemer. Now and again he sees 
it lifting itself superbly as the pillar and ground of 
the truth, holding aloft in the eyes of the nations 
the mystery of godliness — Jesus. Always it is 
to him the medium of revelation, the organ through 
which the Almighty speaks both to men and to 
angels. "And now unto me, who am less than the 
least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach 
unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 
to the intent that now unto the principalities and the 
powers in the heavenly places might be made known 
through the church the manifold wisdom of God." 
It was when he wrote to his maturest converts — 
those in Corinth and Ephesus — that he had most 
to say about the church. The theme of the pro- 
foundest of all his letters — that to the Ephesians 
— is the church of Christ. To regret that Paul has 
so much to say about the church is to repine that 
Christianity is not other than it is. 
Paul's favorite figure of the church is a temple, 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 25 

and he loved to think of himself as a master-builder. 
Jesus Christ is the foundation stone and Christian 
ministers all build on him. Christian believers are 
little temples to be carefully built into the walls of 
a vast temple. "Know ye not that ye are a temple 
of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you ? 
If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall 
God destroy ; for the temple of God is holy, which 
temple ye are." It is interesting to note how this 
figure haunts the Apostle, shaping and coloring his 
language, and cropping out in unexpected ways and 
places. For the temples built of gold and silver 
and precious stones, Paul substituted the temple to 
be built of immortal souls; and to work for the en- 
largement and adorning of this temple was to him 
the greatest privilege which the good God can bestow. 
It was the vision of this temple with which he strove 
to inflame the hearts of his converts, and by means of 
which he braced his own intrepid spirit when the 
sky was full of thunder. "Ye are no more stran- 
gers," he cries, "and sojourners, but ye are fellow 
citizens with the saints, and of the household of 
God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles 
and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief 
corner-stone, in whom each several building, fitly 
framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the 



26 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

Lord ; in whom ye also are builded together for a 
habitation of God in the Spirit." This then is the 
work which the God and Father of Jesus Christ 
wishes to accomplish, and his plan is to do it by the 
cooperation of Christian men. Paul considered 
not only himself, but all church officials from the 
highest to the lowest as church builders. "And he 
gave some to be apostles ; and some, prophets ; 
and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and 
teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the 
work of ministering unto the building up of the 
body of Christ." The sentence has been marred for 
English readers by a faulty translation and a mis- 
taken punctuation. It has been cut into three 
sections as though there were three separate and 
distinct things which Christian ministers are or- 
dained to do. There is in fact only one thing. 
Their work is to equip or furnish believers for the 
work of ministering with a view to the building up 
of the body of Christ, which is Paul's name for the 
church. The building of the church is the supreme 
aim of every minister who holds Paul's view of the 
work of the Christian ministry. 

The task of building belongs to all believers, 
and in order to train believers in the art of build- 
ing, ministers of various ranks and endowments are 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 27 

selected and anointed by the supreme head of the 
church. It is because Paul always considers himself 
a builder that he employs so frequently the word 
which in Latin is " edify" but which in Anglo- 
Saxon is "build." His conception of himself as 
builder dictates to him the vocabulary of his ser- 
mons. "In the church I had rather speak five 
words with my understanding that I might instruct 
others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue." 
He will not use a tongue because it does not build 
up. How can men be built up by words whose 
meaning they do not know? If a man forgets 
that he is a church builder, he is well-nigh certain 
to employ a tongue, it may be scientific, or 
philosophical, or literary, or bookish, which while 
pleasing to himself is not intelligible to those to 
whom he preaches. If all Christian preachers 
since the days of Paul had only held fast Paul's 
conception of the aim of preaching as church 
building, not so many of them would have soared 
into the clouds of scintillating phrases, or plunged 
into the muddy depths of what they were pleased 
to call "thought." It is because Paul was a 
builder that he wrote sentences such as this, "If 
meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no 
flesh forevermore." Why not? Because many 



28 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

lawful acts are not expedient. Actions that are 
lawful do not always build up. A Christian minister 
is not to do the thing which he has an abstract right 
to do, but the thing which will build up the church. 
The conception of church building then is the 
one by which a minister's conduct is to be largely 
controlled and directed. Whatever builds up the 
church is good for a minister to do, whatever pulls 
down the church a minister ought to avoid. The 
minister who stands on his legal rights while his 
church slowly disintegrates, or who pushes a pet 
policy even though he sees that it is splitting the 
church asunder, does not act on the principle by 
which the first great Christian preacher was guided. 
It is possible to be too insistent on one's rights, too 
conscious of one's deserts. A man with both eyes 
open to his rights is likely to be blind to the glory 
of the church. Knowledge of one's rights puffs up, 
love for the church builds up. Stubbornness and 
vanity often wear the garb of conscientiousness and 
consecration. When the question arises, "Which 
shall be sacrificed, the preacher or the church?" 
the man who follows Paul will be swift to give the 
right answer. The most pious of ministers may 
become one of the most dangerous and wicked of 
men if he writes himself large and the church 



CHURCH BUILDING DDE A IN NEW TESTAMENT 20. 

small. Men who tear churches to pieces deserve 
to be cast out with the publicans and heathen. 

But laymen and preachers are bound by the 
same principles. Laymen as well as preachers are 
church builders. A good definition of a Christian 
would be, "a builder of the church of Jesus Christ. " 
"Build one another up," so wrote the master builder 
to a company of Christians in Thessalonica. It is 
an exhortation of perennial significance. Men 
become dilapidated as stone walls do. The mortar 
rots and the stones fall apart. Human nature 
crumbles and character goes to pieces. The virtues 
of the soul fall asunder and men need to be rebuilt. 
This is the work which Christians must do for one 
another, and it is a service in which the apostle 
exhorts them to abound. "Seek that ye may 
abound in the work of building up." "Let each 
one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, 
unto building up" — so he wrote to the members 
of the church in Rome. "Let us follow after things 
which make for peace, and things whereby we may 
build one another up" — this is the gist of what he 
said to all the churches. Many of the church 
members of the first century had not grasped the 
idea of building. Religion to them was an indi- 
vidualistic possession, a treasure to be prized, an 



30 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

experience to be enjoyed. They did not conceive 
of themselves as members of a society, organs of 
an organism, stones in a temple; and the result was 
frequent discord and distressing scandal. Men 
followed their own bent, indulged their vanity, 
gave vent to their censorious temper, pulled to 
pieces the unity of the congregation. In no church 
were conditions worse than in the church in Corinth. 
Considerateness and forbearance were virtues 
slightly practised, vanity and self-seeking were 
vices in full bloom. To this church the grieved 
apostle unfolds his idea of building. He shows 
how the abuses of public worship arise — Christians 
forget that they are builders. He feels that the 
sins which bring reproach on the name of Jesus 
would disappear if men gave themselyes to the 
work of building. His counsel is summed up in the 
single sentence : "Let everything be done with a 
view to building." 

This is a fit motto for a minister to inscribe above 
the desk on which he writes his sermons. The 
preacher is first of all a builder. He deals in 
affirmations, not in denials. He constructs, and only 
incidentally tears down. He is an architect and 
not an iconoclast. It is an evil spirit which takes 
delight in pulling things to pieces. Let a preacher 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 3 1 

beware of negations, especially during the first 
five years of his ministry. Youth has a fatal fond- 
ness for negations. Let the beginning preacher 
preach what he believes, and not tomahawk the 
doctrines which he has discarded. The preacher 
who brandishes an axe in the eyes of his congrega- 
tion, hewing down with glee discredited dogmas and 
outgrown interpretations, need not be surprised if 
the church is shaken and his pulpit is rendered in- 
secure. It is not courage, but lack of sense, which 
usually gets preachers into trouble. Laymen are 
as a rule not unwilling to listen to new conceptions 
which have a show of reasonableness; but the 
man who tears to pieces their old truth with a 
chuckle and stamps upon it with a whoop is sure 
to be resisted. It is not in human nature to relish 
reiterated and gloating declarations that nearly 
all one's old beliefs are both false and silly. If a 
man has really worked his way into broader and 
nobler conceptions, let him give his new vision in 
such a way that the church shall be lifted up and 
strengthened. Let every sentence of the sermon 
be written with a view, not to pulling down men who 
are dead, but to building up men who are alive. 
The words which might profitably be written across 
the preacher's study wall might wisely be in- 



32 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

scribed in characters of gold before the eyes of all 
the congregation. What a transformation there will 
be in public worship, what a revolution in many a 
disciple's life, and what a reformation in the 
whole temper and conduct of many a Christian 
congregation, when once the idea is firmly grasped 
that all the followers of Jesus, both the man in the 
pulpit and the men in the pew, have for their heaven- 
appointed mission the building of the church ! 

Whence did Paul get his idea of church building ? 
Whence did it come to Peter ? To Peter also the 
church is the family of God, and his two exhorta- 
tions stand side by side : "Love the brotherhood, 
Fear God." To Peter likewise the church is a 
living temple. To Peter, no less than to Paul, 
Jesus is the foundation stone, the stone rejected 
but chosen of God and precious, upon which living 
stone believers are built up a spiritual house. To 
Peter's eyes also the glory has vanished from temples 
made with hands, and now resides in the spiritual 
temple, the church of the living God. Whence came 
this passionate devotion to the church, and how 
did it happen that both apostles loved to think of 
it as a building ? The source of both the conception 
and the passion was undoubtedly the Son of God. 
It was at Csesarea Philippi — so Matthew tells us 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 33 

— at a critical moment in Jesus' life, when there 
occurred a twofold confession. The first was by 
Simon Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
Living God." This was the first full- toned recogni- 
tion by man of the heavenly origin and character of 
Jesus. For this Jesus had been waiting. It is now 
time for him to make his confession. "Blessed 
art thou, Simon Bar-Jona : for flesh and blood 
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my father which 
is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou 
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church : 
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." 
There is an enthusiasm in these words which 
glows and flashes. They carry in their body the 
leaping joy of an exultant spirit. The declaration 
fell upon the air with the thrill of a new revelation. 
One feels that a secret long held back has leaped into 
the light. A man has at last recognized the presence 
of the world's Messiah, and to him and to his com- 
rades who share his insight and conviction is now 
revealed what the Messiah has come to earth to do. 
It is his purpose to establish a society, a brotherhood, 
an institution which shall incorporate his spirit 
and perpetuate his work. The revelation was not 
given to the crowd. The crowd could not under- 
stand it or make use of it. The highest truths are 



34 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

reserved for those who have ears to hear. The 
twelve did not at first grasp the full meaning of the 
words spoken at Caesarea Philippi. They under- 
stood them better after the Day of Pentecost. 
They are words which even now are often imper- 
fectly apprehended. They express a plan of God 
which can be only spiritually discerned. 

Arguments are sometimes urged to prove that the 
church was a matter of indifference to Jesus. He 
cared only for ideas — men say — and the Christian 
church was an after-thought of his ambitious 
followers. As evidence for the soundness of this 
contention, it is said in triumph that Jesus never so 
much as mentioned the church but twice, conse- 
quently he cared nothing for it. It is indeed a 
wooden principle of interpretation, just now in vogue, 
which measures the importance of a fact by the 
number of times it is mentioned in the Scriptures. 
This is surrendering the use of intellect and settling 
difficult and spiritual questions by rule of thumb. 
It would seem then that he knows best the meaning 
of the New Testament who is quickest in the art of 
counting. But a thing may exist without the name, 
and a mere mathematician will never understand 
the gospels. Many things of moment Jesus never 
dealt with at all, because those lessons had been 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 35 

already learned. There are wide gaps in his re- 
corded sayings because much was taken for granted 
by the men who wrote the gospels. That a religion 
could live and conquer without organization and 
without officials was an idea unthinkable to every 
first century Jew. Moreover there were subjects 
about which Jesus could not speak in public without 
hastening a crisis. One of such subjects was his 
Messiahship. He announced it so guardedly and so 
incidentally that certain New Testament scholars 
have declared that he never taught it at all. It was 
a fact to be spiritually apprehended and left to 
make its way in the world by the power of its own 
spirit. To have shouted it from the housetop would 
have forced forward the last act of the drama. 
What is true of his Messiahship is true also of his 
church. How could he have spoken of his church 
before the bigoted devotees of the Jewish church 
without precipitating the tragedy which it was 
necessary for a season to postpone? Things held 
in reserve are not therefore unimportant. It may 
be their tremendous importance which makes neces- 
sary the reticence concerning them. Jesus did not 
speak of the church in public for reasons perfectly 
clear, preferring to use terms which would excite 
least suspicion and create least irritation in the 



36 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

hearts he was trying to reach. But while he made 
no public announcement, he pondered the church 
in his heart and gave himself unreservedly, from the 
day at Caesarea Philippi onward, to the knitting 
of the souls of twelve men into a brotherhood, 
which should go on enlarging until it had embraced 
the world. To a man whose eyes are not holden, the 
church is a towering and ubiquitous fact of the 
gospels. In the upper chamber, on the last night, 
it is to his church that Jesus speaks. To it and it 
only he gives the promise of the Holy Spirit ; 
for it and it only he offers his high-priestly prayer ; 
to it and it only he presents himself after his resur- 
rection, and to it and only to it he gives the great 
commission. "Go, disciple the nations." Not to 
any individual believer, but to the society of 
believers, is the assurance granted of ultimate and 
unimaginable victory. 

When it is said that Jesus did not found the 
church, language is used which needs explanation. 
If by founding the church is meant giving to a set 
of men a definite constitution and by-laws, with 
minute regulations as to polity and officials, then one 
may correctly say that Jesus did not found the 
church. But when one considers his work upon the 
twelve, and what the one hundred and twenty did 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 37 

immediately after the Spirit — his Spirit — had 
come upon them, which Spirit he had expressly 
declared would lead them into truth, one is driven 
to the conclusion that it was Jesus who organized 
the Christian church, and that he and he alone 
can rightfully be called its Founder. If we are 
to accept the book of the Acts as authentic history, 
and are to believe in the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit, then we cannot escape the conclusion that the 
organization of the church was the act of Jesus, 
because the men who were the nearest to him in 
life and in death, and who were flooded with his 
spirit after a cloud had received him from their 
sight, threw themselves at once into the work of 
organizing believers into churches baptized into his 
name. The promise had been : "The Holy Spirit 
shall take the things of mine and show them un- 
to you," and the first thing shown to them was the 
Christian church. The church is the inevitable 
and indestructible creation of Christ's spirit. That 
he founded it and that it is the expression of his 
will, is also evidenced by Christian experience. His- 
tory proves that the continuance of Christianity 
is dependent upon the church. The church is an 
essential constituent of the Christian religion. The 
principles of Jesus do not enthrone themselves in 



38 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 

human society without the assistance of the church. 
The church is in literal truth the body of Jesus. 
Without it he does no mighty deeds. The amount 
of work which he accomplishes in every country is 
conditioned on the character of the church in that 
country. The kind of service he performs in any 
community is determined by the character of the 
Christian society in that community. Whenever 
the church prospers, society improves . Whenever the 
church languishes, society degenerates. When the 
church is vigorous and spiritual, the social atmos- 
phere becomes bracing and clear; when the church 
becomes worldly and corrupt, the sun is turned into 
darkness and the moon into blood. The principles 
of Jesus take root in pagan lands only when they are 
planted there and watered by the church. The 
gospel would never have gotten out of Palestine 
had it not been for the Christian brotherhood, nor 
out of Europe into England had it not been for the 
church, nor out of the Old World into the New had 
the church not sent it. There is no hope for the 
triumph of the Christian religion outside the church. 
Therefore, "I will build my church." It is his. 
He is the architect. Preachers in hours of despon- 
dency should listen to him saying : "I will build my 
church." "Unless the Lord build the house, they 



CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 39 

labor in vain who build it." He is at work. The 
church is no little private enterprise of ours. It is 
his. We are colaborers with him. He is ever by 
our side. The gates of death shall not prevail. 
Critics rage and brilliant writers imagine a vain 
thing. Kings and rulers in divers realms take 
counsel together and agree that the glory of the 
church is departing. He that sitteth in the heavens 
laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. The 
church is not obsolescent. Humanity has not out- 
grown it. Its noon is not behind it. Its triumphal 
career has only begun. We are toiling amid the 
mists of the early morning. It is the rising sun 
which smites our foreheads, and we cannot even 
dream of the glory which is to be. We work upon 
an enduring institution. After the flags of republics 
and empires have been blown to tatters, and the 
earth itself has tasted death, the church of Jesus 
shall stand forth glorious, free from blemish and 
mark of decay, the gates of Hades shall not prevail 
against it. Therefore, my beloved brethren, in 
these confused and confusing days, be steadfast, 
immovable in the presence of the world's clamor and 
rancor, always building your life and the lives of as 
many as God intrusts to your keeping, into the 
church of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that 
such labor is not in vain in the Lord. 









LECTURE II 
BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

"Brotherhood" is St. Peter's name for the 
church. The conception of the church held by the 
leader of the Twelve and the man to whom our Lord 
first promised the keys of the Kingdom is deserv- 
ing of sustained attention. That members of the 
church are brothers, St. Peter everywhere takes 
for granted. " Be ye all like-minded, compassionate, 
loving as brothers, tender-hearted, humble-minded" 
— this sums up his idea of the disposition which 
church members should have toward one another. 
He has many bits of advice to give his converts, 
but this is chief : " Above all things be fervent 
in your love among yourselves. Honor all men. 
Love the brotherhood." 

St. John holds the same conception. To him the 
church is a band of brothers, and the first duty of 
church members is loving one another. There is 
little else that the beloved apostle cares to write. 
"He that loveth his brother abide th in the light." 
"We know that we have passed out of death into 
life because we love the brethren." "We ought 

43 



44 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

to lay down our lives for the brethren." "This 
is his commandment, that we should believe in the 
name of his son Jesus Christ, and love one another." 
"Beloved, let us love one another." "If God so 
loved us we also ought to love one another." 
"If a man say, I love God and hateth his brother, 
he is a liar ; for he that loveth not his brother whom 
he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not 
seen." "This commandment have we from him 
that he who loveth God, love his brother also." 
With St. John's writings before us, it is easy to 
believe the tradition that when he was old, unable 
any longer to walk, the young men in the church 
in Ephesus were wont to carry him before the 
people, to whom he repeated again and again, 
"Little children, love one another." When they 
asked him why he said this so many times, his reply 
was, "Because it is the Lord's precept, and if only 
it be done, it is enough." 

St. Paul was not in the upper chamber when the 
Twelve received the new commandment, but his 
conception of the church is identical with that of 
John and Peter. To Paul the church is a brother- 
hood. "Concerning love of the brethren," Paul 
writes to the church in Thessalonica, "ye have no 
need that one write unto you, for ye yourselves 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 45 

are taught of God to love one another ; for indeed 
ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all 
Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, that ye 
abound more and more." This is his exhortation 
to all Christians and he gives expression to it again 
and again, "In love of the brethren be tenderly 
affectioned one to another ; in honor preferring one 
another." It is only as Christians are rooted and 
grounded in love that they are "strong to appre- 
hend with all the saints what is the breadth and 
length and height and depth, and to know the love 
of Christ which passeth knowledge." In his first 
letter to the Corinthians, Paul's conception of love 
breaks into language of unsurpassed and unforget- 
table splendor. He declares what love is, how it 
acts, feels, thinks, and what victories it wins. 
Without it, no matter what else we possess, we 
have nothing. This was written to the church 
which was most deficient in that which is the 
distinctive treasure of a Christian church. Unless 
a church is a brotherhood, a company of men and 
women whose sympathies and purposes are inter- 
twined, and whose lives are interlaced and blended, 
we may call it a Christian church, but it does not 
bear in the body of its life the marks of the Lord 
Jesus. 



46 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

Whence did these three preachers get their con- 
ception of the church ? They preached only what 
they received. It was Jesus' habit to remind his 
disciples that he was their Master and that all 
they were brethren. The crowning period of his 
life was devoted almost exclusively to the task of 
knitting together the hearts of the men who were to 
constitute the nucleus of his church. How heavy 
this burden lay upon his heart is seen in his behavior 
and words in the upper chamber. All along the 
way that day, there had been outbreaks of temper 
on the part of the twelve, and the old spirit of ill- 
will crops out again as they take their places round 
the table. The feast cannot go on. Christ can 
hold no festival except where hearts are sweet. He 
takes a basin and a towel and proceeds to bathe the 
disciples' feet, not because he cares for the dust 
on their feet, but because he is pained by the 
estrangement of their hearts. This done, he an- 
nounces a commandment which is to take precedence 
over all the instructions which he has hitherto given 
them. "A new commandment I give unto you, 
that ye love one another ; even as I have loved 
you, that ye also love one another. By this shall 
all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have 
love one to another." This is indeed startling 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 47 

teaching. Let all who would preach the gospel 
read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. The 
distinctive note of the Christian life is here pro- 
claimed to be love for one's fellow-Christians. 
A man proves himself a Christian, not by loving 
men in general, but by loving his brethren in Christ. 
The first and inevitable fruit of an instructed Chris- 
tian heart is love for one's brother Christians. 
This is a truth which our Lord labored unceasingly 
to make clear to his disciples. The things which 
are uppermost in one's mind are likely to come out 
in his prayers. They are sure to emerge in the 
prayers which one offers in the presence of death. 
Listen then to the last prayer of Jesus. He prays 
that his disciples may be one. He prays for it 
again and again. It is the one longing which throbs 
through his whole prayer. The outside world 
passes for a season out of his thought. The nations 
and their needs sink below the horizon. He thinks 
only of his church, of the men who are there in his 
presence, and of the multitudes who will believe on 
him through their word. He can conceive of no 
higher blessing for them than communion of spirit, 
comradeship in heart, union in love. "That they 
may all be one, even as thou Father art in me and I 
in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the 



48 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

world may believe that thou didst send me." 
Fellowship, then, is to be the proof of the divine 
power of Jesus, evidence to the world that he came 
from heaven. The world is not to be convinced and 
converted by reasoning or philosophy or eloquence, 
but by the love of Christians for one another. 
"The glory which thou hast given me I have given 
unto them ; that they may be one, even as we are 
one ; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be 
perfected into one : that the world may know that 
thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou 
lovedst me." This is amazing doctrine. It sounds 
novel even now. Christ declares his mission to be 
the binding of men together by indissoluble bonds. 
It is by the brotherliness of those who believe in 
Jesus that the hard heart of the world is to be 
softened and the truthfulness of Jesus' words 
established. The world is to be brought to God 
by Christians loving one another. 

It is incontrovertible that, according to the New 
Testament, the men who were baptized into the 
spirit of Jesus looked upon the church from the 
beginning as a brotherhood or family. The vocabu- 
lary and customs of home life were carried over into 
the church. The church was known as the house- 
hold of faith, the family of God. Christians called 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 49 

one another not " Christians, " but "brethren/' and 
after the fashion of Eastern lands they greeted one 
another at their meetings with a kiss. In their assem- 
blies they gathered round a common table, enjoying 
a love-feast together. The sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper was linked to the dinner table, the central 
social institution in the home. The church's most 
sacred ceremony was a reminder that believers be- 
long to one another. The church was a communion 
of brothers. High in the list of graces stood the 
grace of hospitality. Christians when they travelled 
were never to find themselves away from home. 
All congregations of believers were to be bound to- 
gether by sacred and spiritual ties, and thus was the 
Lord's prayer to be fulfilled. A favorite name 
for "church" in the early Christian centuries was 
"Brotherhood." Alas, that it was ever lost ! 

When we close the New Testament and look 
around us, we find ourselves in a different world. 
There is a change in the atmosphere which is 
chilling. The Roman Catholic idea of the church is 
not the idea of Peter. Her definition of the church 
as phrased by Cardinal Bellarmine is: "The 
one and true church is the congregation of men 
united by the profession of the same Christian faith 
and the communion of the same sacraments under 

E 



50 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

the rule of the legitimate pastors, and especially the 
one vicar of Christ upon earth." Everything 
mentioned in this definition is external. Love 
has no stated place at all. In Roman Catholic 
practice the church is essentially a hierarchy, the 
officials being exalted far above the laity, constitut- 
ing a class apart, while the rank and file of the 
Lord's followers, often reduced to the level of mere 
spectators, come to God only through the hierarchy. 
How different Christian history would have been, 
if from the fourth to the sixteenth century the men 
who claimed to sit in Peter's chair had followed 
Peter, and had said to all priests: "Tend the 
flock of God, exercising the oversight, not of con- 
straint, but willingly, according unto God ; nor 
yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind ; neither 
as lording it over the charge allotted to you, but 
making yourselves ensamples to the flock," and 
to all congregations, "Love as brethren, have 
fervent love among yourselves, love the brother- 
hood." 

Nor has Protestantism ever read with unclouded 
eye what the New Testament says about the church. 
The definition formulated by the Anglican church 
and adopted by the Protestant Episcopal and 
Methodist Episcopal churches reads thus: "The 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 5 1 

visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful 
men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, 
and the sacraments be duly administered according 
to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of 
necessity are requisite to the same." The West- 
minster Confession says : "The Catholic or univer- 
sal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole 
number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be 
gathered into one, under Christ, the head thereof ; 
and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of him that 
filleth all in all. The visible church, which is also 
catholic or universal under the gospel, consists of all 
those throughout the world, that profess the true 
religion, and of their children ; and is the kingdom 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of 
God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility 
of salvation." These definitions reappear with 
minor variations in most of the creeds of Protestant 
Christendom. The two features of the church 
which Protestants have made conspicuous are the 
preaching of the word and the administration of the 
sacraments. But preaching is not sufficient to 
make a church, nor is the proper 'administration of 
the sacraments. That a definition of the church 
should have in it no reference to what the Head 
of the church counts fundamental is indeed calami- 



52 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

tous. When did Jesus magnify sacraments and 
sermons, passing by the obligations and ministries 
of love? The aUeged "one vicar of Christ upon 
earth" does not make a church, nor does a bishop, 
nor a preacher, nor a man who baptizes, nor an 
official who offers a prayer over the bread and the 
wine. A church is a brotherhood, a school for 
training in fellowship, a home for the cultivation 
of the social virtues and the human graces, a society 
in which men are bound together in sympathy and 
holy service by a common allegiance to the Son of 
God. It is a congregation of faithful men, ever 
striving to learn and live the new commandment, 
looking unto Jesus for power to understand and 
practice the law of love. The new commandment 
is the standard by which all churches must be 
measured, and in the light of this standard the 
church universal knows herself to be poor and blind 
and naked. Many city churches are made up of 
people who do not even know one another, and 
who do not want to know one another. Too many 
village churches are composed of people who know 
one another, and are sorry that they do. The 
very thing which the New Testament asserts to 
be the one thing needful, and without which the 
world cannot be won for Christ, is the thing which 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 53 

is to-day least abundant. To create an ampler and 
a warmer fellowship inside the church of Jesus is the 
first work for which preachers are ordained, and 
yet many of them, instead of staying at home and 
attending to their business, have gone scampering 
off in wild crusades against the distant Saracens, 
wasting their strength in frenzied efforts to recon- 
struct by a furious blowing of trumpets the economic 
and social order. There are many congregations, let 
us be thankful, in which the new commandment is 
understood and honored, and it is these congrega- 
tions which constitute the hope of Christendom. 
They hold in their hand the key which unlocks all 
the doors. They possess the secret for which the 
world is waiting. No churches, let us hope, are 
altogether devoid of the love for which the Master 
and his apostles pleaded. Even in congregations 
which seem paralyzed or dead, there is usually 
at the centre a little circle of loyal and devoted 
believers, whose hearts have been fused by the 
Holy Spirit, and whose lives have been blended by 
fellowship in Christian work and prayer. To 
extend this circle of lovers, whether it be larger or 
smaller, and endow it with a fuller measure of wis- 
dom and power is, in my judgment, the distinctive 
and crucial work of the Christian minister. It is 



54 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

the work which the Master did, and he says, 
"Follow me!" 

There are probably few important sentences in 
the gospels used so seldom by Christian ministers 
as texts for sermons as is the golden sentence of 
our Lord : "Love one another, even as I have loved 
you." It seems to be a difficult sentence to rind, 
and even more difficult to understand. It is often 
made to mean something different from what it 
teaches. A common interpretation makes it equiv- 
alent to "love all men everywhere." But such an 
exposition empties it of its content, and robs it of 
its power to accomplish the work which Jesus had in 
mind. He is not exhorting here to a vague humani- 
tarianism or a wholesale philanthropy. He is not 
proclaiming the brotherhood of man. He is not 
thinking of men in general. He is speaking to 
members of his church, and telling them how to 
live together so as to convince the world that he is 
what he claims to be. Victory for his cause is to be 
achieved by their love for one another. It is no 
ordinary love which is called for, but love fashioned 
after his own, and lifted to its white intensity and 
heavenly temper. A Christian owes something 
to a fellow-Christian which he owes to no other 
human being, his first duty is to his fellow-believers, 



Building the brotherhood 55 

his first obligation is to his Christian brethren, his 
first concern is with his comrades in Christ. It is 
by Christians loving one another after the sacrificial 
manner of Jesus that other men are to become 
Christians. Love is the law of the church. Love 
is the badge of discipleship. Love is the chief 
evangelist and head worker. Love is the power 
which overcomes. It is not love for the community 
or love for humanity, but love for one's fellow- 
Christians by which the door of the world's heart is 
to be opened. The teaching was plain and the 
early Christians caught it. The secret of the prog- 
ress of the early church lies revealed in the excla- 
mation of the pagan crowd — "Behold how these 
Christians love one another !" 

The primary work of a preacher, then, is the 
cultivation by word and deed of the spirit of 
Christlike brotherliness among the members of 
his own church. Many ministers shrink from this 
work as something narrowing and unworthy. The 
very statement that such is a minister's work 
sounds like heresy and arouses antagonism and 
revulsion in many hearts. Such teaching seems 
like harking back to the dark ages. The brother- 
hood of man and not the brotherhood of Christians 
is the doctrine which our century is ready to hear. 



56 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

All men are our brothers. A man who is up to date 
will make no distinctions but will love everybody 
alike. Let a preacher T therefore, exhort his people 
continually to love humanity, being careful to lay 
no special emphasis, as a New Testament writer 
mistakenly did, upon those who belong to the house- 
hold of faith. It is just here that many a minister 
makes his greatest mistake. In his eagerness to be 
broad he becomes narrow. In ignoring limitations 
prescribed by the Lord of life he becomes feeble. 
By trying to do too much he achieves nothing. In 
his liberality he wipes out distinctions which cannot 
be repudiated without loss. In his zeal to rise 
above boundaries, he loses himself in the clouds. 
Nothing is more essential to a preacher in our 
day than an understanding of the function and 
power of limitations. It is only as a man is willing 
to confine himself within narrow limits that he 
can do any mighty work. Men all round us are 
frittering away their lives because of their vagueness. 
Sermons in appalling numbers amount to little 
because of their generalities. Defmiteness in 
thought and action is the thing above all things 
for the twentieth century preacher to cultivate. 
Concentration is the supreme prudence of ministe- 
rial life. It is easy to declaim eloquently about the 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 57 

brotherhood of man, but much that is said upon 
that subject is vapid and futile. The air is full of 
talk about brotherhood, but brotherhood does 
not come by poetic quotations and rhapsodical 
orating. Brotherhood is a spiritual creation, the 
work of men who have been recreated in Christ. 
It is a fellowship of souls based upon a fellowship 
with God's only-begotten Son. The redemption of 
the world is carried onward by the binding of 
Christian hearts and lives together. To Paul, 
fellowship was everything. His letters were full 
of it because his heart was overflowing. To get the 
members of the local church closer together, and the 
churches of each region closer together, and the 
churches of the Jewish and Gentile worlds closer 
together — this was the object of his labors and 
prayers. Christianity to him is fellowship in the 
Lord. Without fellowship faith is empty, hope is 
darkened, love is starved. It is through the 
communion of saints that this world and all worlds 
are to see what God is and what he is able to do. 

Do not be afraid, then, to preach boldly the 
doctrine of the new commandment. Preach it just 
as the Lord himself taught it. Count it your joy 
to train the members of your church in the fine art 
of living together. It is the most dinicult of all the 



58 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

arts, and the church is the school ordained of God 
for perfecting men in this art. You are not doing a 
narrow work when you teach the members of your 
church the range and wealth of Christian fellowship. 
The church is the world in miniature. In it exist 
all the forces and relationships, the entanglements 
and evils, which the world as a whole presents. 
There is not a world evil which can be anywhere so 
effectively attacked as within the church of Christ. 
There is not an industrial or social or racial prob- 
lem which can be dealt with outside so profoundly 
as inside the Christian brotherhood. When you 
straighten out the tangled relations of your church 
members to one another, you are contributing to 
the solution of social problems everywhere. When 
you soften class antipathies and racial antagonisms 
within your congregation, you are helping to solve 
the most baffling of the world complications. When 
you induce all sorts and conditions of men to live 
together as brethren in your own church commun- 
ion, you are hastening the day when men the wide 
world over shall be brothers. Humanity is in the 
making, and the church is the institution in which 
society is moulded into nobler forms and fitted for 
finer issues. When Paul built a slave into the 
brotherhood at Colossag, he signed the death war- 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 59 

rant for slavery in England and America. When 
Jesus induced twelve men differing from one 
another widely in temperament, idea, and social 
standing to sit down together in an upper chamber 
in Jerusalem, he contributed to the solution of the 
social problem in every city throughout the world. 
It is impossible to kindle a fire on your church 
hearth without the world feeling the warmth of it. 
But you cannot kindle a fire unless you bring the 
fagots together. The minister's first business is to 
get his people together. Let him preach to his 
church, and his church, when converted, will 
preach to the world. Let him kindle the church, 
and the church will illumine the community. The 
lamp of the town is the church. If the lamp of the 
church is darkness, how great is that darkness ! 
The minister who gives himself to the training of 
a church in Christian fellowship is not dwarfing the 
affections or curtailing the range of the sympathies 
of his people. He is creating the very capacities 
and powers by means of which Christ's large wish 
for the world can be most speedily fulfilled. Affec- 
tions are most surely enriched and strengthened 
only when cultivated in narrow fields. It is the 
man who loves his own wife as he loves no other 
woman, who comes to take a chivalric attitude to all 



60 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

women everywhere. By his love for one woman 
he grows into a widening appreciation of the dignity 
and beauty of womanhood. It is the father who 
loves his own children as he loves no others, whose 
affections go out farthest toward all boys and girls 
and who is swiftest to gather them into the round 
tower of his heart. Men who are most faithful to 
their own homes are the men to be first counted on 
for the defence and maintenance of the interests of 
all homes. It is the man who has come into fellow- 
ship with his brother men in his own Church who is 
most likely to come into right relations with men 
who have no connection with organized Christian- 
ity. Love when once kindled travels far, but it 
must first be kindled. The church of Jesus is es- 
tablished for the express purpose of kindling the 
fire of love. Sermons are a part of the fuel by which 
the fire is nourished. Pastoral work also feeds and 
safeguards the holy flame. The wise preacher is al- 
ways striving to bring the members of his church 
into a richer fellowship. The weakness of the 
modern church lies in its dwarfed affections. The 
shame of present-day Christianity is its stunted 
sympathies. The church is rich in money, ideas, 
apparatus, numbers, but poor in love. This is in 
part the fault of preachers. Too many of them 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 6 1 

fail to cultivate the affections. They do not 
understand how to open the heart. They are in- 
terested in problems and what they call the " King- 
dom," but they are not sufficiently interested in the 
group of people of whom they are the appointed 
religious teachers. They neglect the work of inter- 
lacing lives, of binding men into bundles, of twining 
purposes and sympathies together for the advance- 
ment of Christ's glory. There are congregations 
which have scant sympathy with the outside world, 
because their members have meagre sympathy 
with one another. If sympathy is cultivated inside 
the church, it spills over into the outside world. 
There are churches which have no interest in the 
struggles and hopes of wage-earners, largely because 
there is no interest among the members of those 
churches in one another. Christian love is expressed 
in the hymn-book, but does not exist in the hearts 
of the people who sing the hymns; and not loving the 
man by his side, it is impossible for the loveless 
church member to love the man who is far away. 
When love is kindled in the hearts of church 
members for one another, it is a fire which burns 
its way to the end of the world. Not a little of the 
indifference of many Christians to the work of 
foreign missions is due to their atrophied social 



62 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

sympathies. Their social nature has become en- 
feebled, and by neglecting their obligations to their 
fellow-townsmen, they find it impossible to respond 
to the claims of unknown men on the other side of the 
globe. Their lack of the spirit of brotherly affection 
incapacitates them also for the worship of God. 
Their worship is mechanical and- unsatisfying. 
The secret of this was told long ago by a man who 
laid it down as axiomatic, that if a man does not 
love his brother whom he has seen he cannot love 
God whom he has not seen. It is the very quintes- 
sence of the Christian teaching that we can know 
God only through man, that we come to God only 
through man, and that we worship God best by 
loving men. Many a preacher has tried to put 
warmth into the worship of his church, and all 
in vain, because he did not know that the source of 
warmth is human fellowship, and that the place to 
begin working for an enrichment of the devotional 
spirit is not among his books, elaborating arguments 
going to prove that men ought to delight in the 
worship of God, but in the social meeting where 
church members come to know one another. 
Christians who are interested in one another in- 
variably become more interested in God. Loving 
men is the only way to grow in the grace of loving 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 63 

God. Unless a church is socialized, how can it be 
expected to feel an interest in social movements? 
A set of people who are not interested in one an- 
other will not be likely in the house of prayer 
to worship God with glad and exultant hearts, or in 
the field of Christian service to work effectively for 
the advancement of the kingdom. The preacher's 
first work is the building of a brotherhood. Out 
of this, when once created, all sorts of reviving 
streams will flow. 

These are good times for preachers to ponder the 
meaning of the new commandment and to train 
their people in the practice of it. Men are thinking 
as never before of solidarity, and organic life and 
corporate responsibilities. In the commercial world 
there is an amazing revelation of the power of co- 
operation, in the industrial world a growing appre- 
hension of the possibilities of collectivism, in the 
new psychology a deepened insight into the relation 
of personality to society. There is a world-wide 
movement called Socialism. In all the king- 
doms of life there is a new vision of the meaning 
of social relationships and the miracle-working 
power of combinations. In the whole trend of the 
world's thought, the Spirit of God is saying some- 
thing to the churches, and the preacher who has 



64 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

ears to hear will receive a revelation. We are liv- 
ing in a social age and the question at the front is 
the social question. Man's social nature is unprec- 
edentedly alive and is clamoring for a satisfaction 
which cannot be denied it. Men are massing them- 
selves in cities, not chiefly because they are most 
needed there, or because they can secure work there, 
but because they find in city life gratification for 
their social cravings. Men hunger for companion- 
ship. They have discovered that it is not good 
for them to five alone. Solitude is unendurable, 
isolation is death. As soon as men come together 
they organize, gather themselves into groups, form 
fraternities, unions, leagues, clubs. Men live by 
fellowship. It is only when hearts and hands 
come together that existence passes into life. The 
multiplication of societies, therefore, goes on in- 
creasingly. This is a fact of which every alert 
preacher is bound to take notice. Many a preacher 
has already observed it to his consternation. He 
has found the unions and lodges, granges and clubs, 
swallowing up the men of the community, leaving 
for the church only women and children. In 
bitterness of spirit he has cried out against these 
secular organizations, denouncing them as enemies 
of the church of God. But all such denunciation is 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 65 

futile. One cannot change the movement of the 
tides. Man is a social animal. God made him 
such. Men are made for fellowship, and if they do 
not find it in the church of God, they will seek it 
where it may be found. The wise preacher will 
waste no time in hurling thunderbolts at rival or- 
ganizations, but will set to work with both hands 
to strengthen the church where the church to-day 
is weakest. His ambition will be to make his church 
the warmest and most effective brotherhood in all 
the town. No stranger member shall remain un- 
greeted. No unfortunate member shall go un- 
befriended. No invalid shall be unvisited. No 
needy person shall be unassisted. No bewildered 
soul shall go unadvised. No home of mourning 
shall be neglected. No act of needed mercy shall 
be omitted. The church shall be a home. Men 
cannot live by sermons alone, but by every word 
which proceeds out of the mouth of God. One of 
God's choice words is fellowship, and unless a church 
offers fellowship it is doomed. Worship without 
fellowship is contrary to nature. The worship in 
the New Testament is carried on by brothers. Men 
cannot love a church if all it offers is the privilege 
of listening to sermons and paying pew rent. It is 
the comradeship of college life which makes men 



66 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

love their college. Their devotion to their Alma 
Mater springs out of the friendships formed during 
their student days. The abstract truths taught 
by learned professors will not account for that 
undying affection which many a man feels for his 
college. His heart is warm because it is bound up 
with other hearts. A man's love- for his church 
depends in large measure upon the relationship 
established between himself and his fellow-members. 
The friendships formed in church life and work 
are among the most sacred and enduring into which 
the soul of man can come. Unless a man enters 
into the social life of the church, he is practically 
not a member of it at all. Listening to a preacher 
speak on religious topics every Sunday does not 
make one a church member, even though his name 
is written on the church roll. Fellowship is of the 
essence of church membership, and to cultivate and 
enrich this fellowship is the primary task of the 
Christian preacher. 

A sharp distinction ought to be made between a 
church and an audience. It is to be regretted that 
we have come to rank churches by the size of their 
nominal membership, and to judge preachers by 
the number of persons who listen to their sermons. 
A superficial man is consequently tempted to work, 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 67 

not for a church, but for an audience. An audience, 
however, is not worth working for. An audience 
is a set of unrelated people drawn together by a 
short-lived attraction, an agglomeration of individ- 
uals finding themselves together for a brief time. 
It is a fortuitous concourse of human atoms, scatter- 
ing as soon as a certain performance is ended. It 
is a pile of leaves to be blown away by the wind, 
a handful of sand lacking consistency and cohesion, 
a number of human filings drawn into position by a 
pulpit magnet, and which will drop away as soon as 
the magnet is removed. An audience is a crowd, 
a church is a family. An audience is a gathering, 
a church is a fellowship. An audience is a collection, 
a church is an organism. An audience is a heap of 
stones, a church is a temple. Preachers are ordained, 
not to attract an audience, but to build a church. 
Coarse and ambitious and worldly men, if richly 
gifted, can draw audiences. Only a disciple of the 
Lord can build a church. It is not uncommon for a 
supposedly mighty church to wilt like Jonah's gourd, 
as soon as the man in the pulpit vanishes. The struc- 
ture was of hay and wood and stubble, and it dis- 
appeared in the fire of God's swift judgment day. 
It is because so many churches are audiences, 
rather than brotherhoods, that thousands of 



68 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

Christians on changing their place of residence 
drop out of church connections altogether. Their 
old church membership meant nothing to them, 
and therefore membership in another church has no 
attraction for them. When they joined the church, 
it was the minister who welcomed them. The 
church took no note of their advent. When death 
visited their home, it was the pastor who offered 
condolence. The church was not grieved by the 
bereavement. When a financial crisis swept the 
little fortune away, leaving the world dark, it was 
the preacher who spoke a sympathetic word, but the 
church cared for none of these things. When the 
hour for departure arrived, it was the head official 
of the church who said, "Good-by," but the 
brotherhood had nothing whatever to say. This is 
the tragedy which goes on in hundreds of parishes, 
and so long as it continues many preachers must 
preach to dwindling congregations and the church 
must limp like a giant, not with a wounded heel, but 
with a broken leg. A man who has been starved in 
one church is not likely to connect himself with 
another. When he makes for himself a new home, 
he will identify himself with a society which oilers 
him comradeship and furnishes an atmosphere in 
which his soul can live. 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 69 

The problem of developing new converts is even 
more perplexing than that of retaining the allegiance 
of old ones. It is easier to convert men than it is 
to educate them. The converts are many, but the 
developed workers are few. In a season of spiritual 
awakening ten seem to be healed, but when the 
preacher goes in search of them, he cries in bewilder- 
ment, " Where are the nine?" Only a small pro- 
portion of those who start the Christian life ever 
reach spiritual maturity. One of the reasons is a 
deadly environment. The atmosphere is so cold 
that the young convert is fatally chilled. He gasps 
for a few months and then expires. There are many 
congregations in which church obligations are so 
little known and practised that it is only the ex- 
ceptional convert who survives the early stages of 
Christian discipleship. The atmosphere of the 
church has in it no life-giving qualities. The church 
is not a brotherhood, and when a new recruit starts 
to follow Jesus, he is not cheered by brotherly 
voices or guided by fraternal hands. In the dark- 
ness of the first days, there is no one to do what 
Ananias did for Saul when he laid his warm hand on 
the trembling convert's head, saying, "Brother 
Saul, receive thy sight." It is often the touch of a 
brother's hand which opens the heavens to the 



70 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

beginning Christian. In successful church work 
the voice of the preacher must be supplemented 
by the welcoming hand of a brother. The preacher 
is never sufficient when he stands alone. Peter was 
mighty on the day of Pentecost, because one hun- 
dred and twenty — the entire brotherhood — stood 
with him. The Bible is not enough to make men 
strong. Human hands and hearts are needed. 
The revelation which came through holy men of 
old must be completed by a revelation coming 
through men now living. The human hand has a 
power which even the Scriptures do not possess. 
There is something in a human heart which com- 
pletes the power of Almighty God in the work of 
saving men. Eloquence is a force, but affection is 
a force still more potent. Social intercourse is a 
means of grace as truly as are prayer and the sacra- 
ments, and is of equal rank with these. Warmth 
is as essential as light in the growing of souls. The 
preacher may furnish light, but the bulk of the 
heat must be supplied by the brotherhood. The 
finest and deepest powers of the soul are called into 
play only by social contact. Every point of contact 
— or, as Paul puts it, "every joint" — is a channel 
of divine grace. It is at the points where Christian 
lives touch that there springs up the life by which 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 7 1 

the church is nourished and made capable for her 
work. God's grace flows through social bonds. We 
are held in our place by personal attachments. We 
save one another. This is why Paul is always ex- 
horting his converts to subject themselves one to 
another. He is not satisfied at times with his 
figure of a temple. He supplements it with his 
figure of the body. Church members are even 
closer together than the stones of a temple 
wall. They are knit together like the parts of an 
organism. Each organ exists for the life and pros- 
perity of the whole. Each is needed by all. The 
whole is dependent on each. The preacher is im- 
potent without the assistance of the brotherhood. 
His words will never catch fire unless the brother- 
hood creates the atmosphere in which gospel truths 
blaze. He cannot, unassisted, hold his converts. 
It is impossible for him, single-handed, to keep his 
spiritual children from falling. His success in con- 
serving the fruits of his labors will be measured by 
his ability to build and maintain a compact and 
conquering brotherhood. Many a sermon must be 
preached on the duties which Christians owe to one 
another. Many an hour must be devoted to the 
difficult and delicate work of linking the lives of the 
new converts into the lives of those who have 



72 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

travelled farther along the perilous and glorious 
way. 

Building the brotherhood, this is our work, and 
work more taxing and baffling God has never given 
to mortals. It brought the Son of God to the cross, 
and every man who attempts the same work must 
drink of a like cup and be baptized with a similar 
baptism. Not until a minister strives to build a 
brotherhood does he realize how unsocial human 
nature is, how narrow and how cold. Not till 
then does he discover what havoc sin has wrought, 
and what low and crude conceptions of the obliga- 
tions of Christian discipleship lodge in many a 
Christian heart. It is only then that human nature 
begins to reveal its deeper uglinesses and that 
many interior littlenesses and meannesses come 
trooping into the light. Even the Lord himself 
could not get twelve men to sit together at a table 
on the last night of his life on earth without an 
exhibition of petty irritation and wounded vanity 
which cast a deeper shadow over his already break- 
ing heart. It is comparatively easy for most 
Christians to listen to sermons. This lays slight 
strain on Christian character. It is easy for many 
Christians to give money. Some of them will give 
it generously. It is not difficult to persuade certain 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 73 

of the elect to engage in Christian work. Work 
among the submerged has in many places become 
even fashionable. But for church members to be 
brotherly with one another, this is indeed difficult, 
in many quarters apparently impossible. Men 
teach boys in mission schools who cannot be in- 
duced to show an interest in their younger brethren 
in their own church. Women work for women in a 
settlement or mission who will not recognize women 
of a different social station in their own church 
family. Men make contributions for carrying the 
gospel into foreign lands who act like heathen in 
their home church. To the amazement of the young 
preacher, social estrangements flourish inside the 
company of the sanctified. Class antagonisms do 
not soften under the most fervent preaching of the 
gospel. Racial lines remain straight and fixed, and 
all the rivalries and enmities, vanities and prejudices, 
of which the world is full, grow rank inside the gar- 
den of the Lord. Possibly it is for this reason that 
certain preachers devote so much attention to 
sinners outside their congregations. A man finds 
relief in striking at a distant octopus who has been 
discomfited by some unregenerate pigmy within 
his reach. The sinners inside his parish are so 
hopeless that in sheer desperation the defeated 



74 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

preacher gives his attention to the great outside 
world, whose tragedies it is easy to portray, whose 
colossal culprits it is harmless to castigate, and 
concerning whose reconstruction it is refreshing to 
give advice. 

But the servant of the Master must not follow 
the things which are easy. Let him take hold of the 
things which are hard. Let him lay both hands on 
his church. He may find that his church is after 
all only an audience, and that its members need 
to be fused into a body which the Lord can use. 
It may be that the older people are not interested 
in the younger people and that they eye each other 
across a chasm which widens and deepens with the 
years. Possibly employers have steadfastly held 
aloof from wage-earners, and the rich men have 
never shown friendliness for the men who are poor. 
It may be that the new members have been allowed 
to continue strangers, and that older members have 
sat for years within six feet of each other without 
even so much as a look of mutual recognition. 
Possibly there are men who quarrelled ten years ago, 
and who have doggedly resisted every suggestion of 
reconciliation. They do not speak either in the 
church or on the street, and this ill-will festering in 
their hearts poisons the atmosphere of the whole 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 75 

church. Here is a problem more urgent for the 
minister than any of the disputes between labor 
and capital. It may be that members of the church 
are estranged from one another by differences in 
doctrinal opinion. An orthodox brother thinks 
that his orthodoxy gives him a right to malign those 
who differ from him, and in defending the truth 
he tramples the new commandment under his feet. 
To train Christian men to love one another who 
differ from one another theologically, is a task 
more formidable than converting the toughest 
of the publicans and the trickiest of the sinners. 
But Jesus is explicit on this point. Worship must 
wait on reconciliation. Get right with your brother, 
says the Lord of love, before you set up your altar. 
It may be that some Pharaoh has grown up in the 
midst of the congregation who lords it over both the 
minister and the saints. He has made trouble for 
years, and, unless suppressed, he will make trouble 
for years to come. Such a man must be dealt with. 
His sin is as destructive to the life of the church as 
habitual drunkenness or flagrant lust. Unbrotherly 
conduct in a church member always makes him a fit 
subject for church discipline, and the minister is not 
doing his duty who allows the church to be torn and 
harassed by an ungodly despot who has set up his 



76 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

throne in the parish. Nothing worth while could 
go on in the upper chamber until Judas was got rid 
of, and so in many a church the communion should 
not be celebrated again until the confirmed mischief- 
maker has been cast out. Patience and mercy are 
always in order, but there are certain transgressors 
who are apparently incorrigible, and their way 
ought to be made hard. 

These are the arduous and cardinal things which 
a minister has to do. It is easy to denounce sins in 
general and still easier to unfold beautiful ideas, but 
to induce different classes of church members to 
live and work together as Christians — this is the 
most stupendous and heart-breaking labor to which 
a minister of the Gospel can set himself. The 
church of Christ if not a brotherhood is a failure. 
To make it a brotherhood, this is the hope and 
despair of the minister, this is his cross and his 
crown. To build all types of humanity into this 
brotherhood is an aim never to be lost sight of. 
Churches organized along social lines are breeders 
of mischief. A church made up of people of but 
one social grade is a church doomed to a blasted 
spiritual experience. A church of the rich is not 
a church after the ideal of Jesus, neither is a church 
of the poor. It is only when the rich and the poor 



BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 77 

sit down together that they come to believe that 
the Lord is the maker of them all. A church 
exists for the express purpose of knitting together 
the lives of those whom the forces of the world 
have driven asunder. The rich and the poor are 
to come together at the feet of him who, once rich, 
for man's sake became poor. The laborer and the 
capitalist are to join hands in front of the cross. 
The cultivated man and the man without schooling 
are to learn each other's worth in Christian service. 
The foreigners are to be no more aliens, but full 
members of the family of God. Brotherhood is 
what the world is clamoring for, and it is an example 
of brotherhood which the Christian church must 
give. The church is the laboratory in which ex- 
periments in brotherliness are to be conducted first 
and farthest. The church is the factory in which 
men are to be converted into brothers. A man 
with a brotherly heart is a form of power which the 
industrial and commercial worlds are waiting for. 
That church is doing humanity the largest service 
which develops within itself the highest potencies 
of love. 

Let preachers, then, create in their churches by 
their preaching the spirit of love, and the churches 
will pass it on. The world will never listen to ser- 



78 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 

mons on sympathy and good-will until these exist in 
heavenly abundance inside the church. What is 
the use of preachers trying to give the world a theory 
of something which the church itself does not prac- 
tise ? No man can preach love effectively over the 
body of a loveless church. Our immediate task 
is not to Christianize the world, but to Christianize 
the church. The church progressively Christianized 
will gradually Christianize society. God cuts our 
piece of work small in order that we may do it well. 
The task, though limited, is dynamic and far- 
reaching. The church, if leaven, will leaven the 
whole lump. Our first business is not with the 
lump, but with the leaven. He is the greatest 
preacher who so frames and utters the thoughts 
of God as to bind together the largest number of 
Christian hearts in closest fellowship for Christlike 
service. 



LECTURE III 
BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

Having viewed the style and proportions of the 
edifice, let us consider the living stones which are to 
go into it. After looking at the whole, it is time to 
study the parts. The fault of the old individualism 
was that it began with the individual and ended 
with him. It worked upon the single man, with no 
clear social end in view. Christian individualism 
begins with a social vision. It sees that the individ- 
ual exists in and for society, and that personality 
feeds and completes itself only in the group. The 
living stones have no abiding life, unless built into 
the walls of a growing temple. The preacher must 
be an individualist, but he must see in his mind's 
eye the completed building, before he begins to 
shape the stones out of which the edifice is to be 
constructed. 

Because of its lack of the social vision, individual- 
ism is to-day discredited, and the danger is that in 
casting aside an individualism which is defective, 
we may throw away the individualism which is 
Christian. Aggregated life has become so important 
g 81 



82 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

in our eyes, that the temptation is to lose interest in 
the human unit. The social vision has for a season 
shaken our faith in the individualistic method. 
A thousand voices remind us that the world is the 
subject of redemption, that society as a whole must 
be claimed for Christ, that the church is not a rescue 
ship, picking up isolated individuals tossed on the 
angry billows, but a mighty servant of the Lord 
gathering up the total interests and institutions of 
the entire race of men. Stirred by these imperial 
phrases, not a few have grown distrustful of all 
traditional methods, and are thinking of men ex- 
clusively in masses. Communities and classes 
and races are alone large enough to catch and hold 
attention. It is not any one rich man or any one 
poor man, but rather the rich and the poor, upon 
whom the gaze of the world is fastened. It is 
capital and labor, rather than any one capitalist 
or any one laborer, which presents a problem that 
appeals to the modern mind. Many leaders and 
teachers have a lively concern for the races, white, 
black, yellow, and brown, who care little for the 
individual representatives of those races. It is 
not uncommon to lose sight of men altogether and fix 
the eyes on the economic system, the industrial 
and social order. Rescuing individuals here and 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 83 

there seems a puttering and paltry occupation, and 
to alter the structure of society, the framework 
of the world, is counted the only business worthy 
the efforts of a full-statured, far-visioned man. 

Preaching in many pulpits has grown increasingly 
impersonal. Sermons have become more and more 
discussions of social questions. To urge upon the 
individuals in the congregation an immediate 
surrender to Christ as Lord, seems to certain 
preachers somewhat irrelevant, and to others quite 
ill-mannered. It is a problem-loving age, as the 
magazines and plays and novels testify, and it is 
hardly to be wondered at that the pulpit should 
be swept along into this roaring torrent. The sub- 
jects uppermost in current literature climb into the 
pulpit, and before the preacher is aware of it he has 
become a professor of economics, a lecturer on soci- 
ology, a writer of pulpit editorials, a social reformer, 
a clerical philanthropist, an instructor in the litera- 
ture of modern movements, or a practitioner of the 
art of mental healing. His favorite subjects are 
Trades-unionism, Socialism, Immigration, Child 
Labor, Juvenile Courts, Democracy, Industrialism, 
Sanitation, Labor and Capital, Trusts and Syndi- 
cates, Factory Legislation, Civic Reform, Over- 
crowding, Sewerage, Sweatshops, Conservation of 



84 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

National Resources, Woman Suffrage, Christian 
Science, and Old Age Pensions. Men all around 
him are discussing these matters, and the preacher 
feels that he also must make his contribution. 
The individual counts less and less, the world 
looms more and more. The preacher is interested 
in man, but not in men, in humanity, but not in 
the particular persons into whose faces he looks 
on the Lord's day. 

The scientific doctrine of environment has also 
been operative in shaping the pattern of pulpit 
teaching. One of the most potent factors in 
moulding a man's life is undoubtedly his surround- 
ings, and science has emphasized and popularized 
this fact. The preacher in his parish finds many 
evidences that environment is mighty, and this dis- 
covery when duly pondered is sure to modify and 
may revolutionize his whole outlook on life. He 
strives to elevate a man in the slums, and fails. 
He makes up his mind that to save a man in a 
swamp is impossible. The swamp itself must first 
be drained. Disease cannot be kept from the home 
when the atmosphere for a mile around is charged 
with poison germs. The first thing to do is to 
cleanse the air. He is tempted to forsake the in- 
dividual altogether, feeling that the first work 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 85 

must be done upon the city as a whole. He begins 
to doubt the doctrine of personal responsibility, 
and to lay the blame for vicious lives upon society. 
The social order becomes to him the transgressor; 
the economic system, the mother of criminals. 
Until these have been changed, pass condemna- 
tion, he says, on no man. You cannot redeem 
the individual until you change the structure of the 
world. This is the style of reasoning by which 
men of tender hearts and impatient tempers are 
sometimes carried into one of the many camps 
of Socialism. Socialism fascinates because it offers 
to do things on a vast scale, and in the telling of its 
story uses only words which are passionate and 
vivid. Why should a man squander his energy 
in pulling an occasional mortal out of his misery, 
when, by uniting with other men, he can help to 
throw the whole framework of civilization in the 
twinkling of an eye on the junk-heap? It is not 
uncommon for preachers whose social conscience is 
sensitive to convert their sermons into chambers of 
horrors. Sunday gives them an opportunity to 
uncover the world's ulcers and running sores. 
Their sense of the world's need and the impetuosity 
of their temper render them impatient with the old 
method of faithful dealing with the individual man. 



86 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

One man in their sight counts for nothing. What is 
he ? A straw blown by the gale, a fly on the rim 
of one of the wheels of the world's chariot, a grain of 
sand on an illimitable shore, a bubble on the crest 
of an immeasurable billow, a vapor that appears for 
a little time and then vanishes away. The religious 
leader who is wise — so these men think — will 
direct his sermons to the community; his effort will 
be to reconstruct the order of the world. 

It is unfortunate that this argument should be so 
plausible as to seduce many sympathetic and con- 
scientious minds, for it is certainly fallacious and 
when acted on leads to an impoverishment of pulpit 
power. Many a man is preaching to a dwindling 
congregation because his sermons have lost the 
personal note. He chills by his vague generalities, 
or enrages by his wholesale denunciations. A con- 
gregation is to be pitied if it has in the pulpit a cleri- 
cal Hamlet whose every second sermon is a lamen- 
tation that the time is out of joint, leaving his 
people to infer that he was born to set it right. 
Such a man would be saved from his aberrations 
by looking steadily at the individuals immediately 
before him. The preacher who allows his eye to 
wander long from the individual man is destined to 
lose power as a preacher. That man preaches 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 87 

most searchingly, most persuasively, and most ef- 
fectively who knows best and loves most the 
individual. 

This is not an age in which the preacher can afford 
to lose out of his work the personal touch. Many 
forces are conspiring to blur the edges of individual- 
ity and melt men down into a common mass. The 
immediate effect of the teaching of modern science 
is to create a loneliness in the human heart. Her 
revelation of the vastness of the universe beats man 
down into a feeling of insignificance, and brings to 
the lips with a fresh poignancy the question of the 
Hebrew poet, "What is man that thou art mindful 
of him?" Men in our day need to be encouraged 
to think of themselves as highly as they ought to 
think. They are waiting for some prophet of the 
Lord to say to them, one by one, "Son of man, 
stand upon thy feet." 

It is an age of migrations, and many hearts are 
forlorn. Foreigners are coming to us by the mill- 
ions, and our fellow-countrymen shift their residence 
with a frequency never known before in any 
land. Electricity and steam have converted us into 
a race of nomads. In this ceaseless movement of 
population there are gigantic perils. Breaking 
up the home often breaks up the foundations of 



55 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

morality. When men move in masses, the indi- 
vidual drops out of sight. Vast populations are 
pouring into the city to be swallowed up in the vor- 
tex of its boiling life. The man who stands out 
distinct in a village becomes invisible in a city. In 
the village his name is honored. He can speak to 
the richest banker, the leading merchant, even to the 
postmaster. But in the city he is quite ignored. 
His very existence is unknown. If he were in the 
penitentiary he would wear a number, but the city 
does not take the trouble even to give him a 
numbered tag. He could not escape from a prison 
without exciting commotion. He can drop out of 
city lif e without an eye winking. Cities are colossal 
destroyers of individuality. They are steam rollers, 
crushing men down into a common smoothness and 
flatness. Here is the preacher's opportunity. 

Industrial forces are working ceaselessly to rob 
the individual of distinction. Machinery crowds 
men into factories and mills, where they are lumped 
together as so many "hands," pieces of an intricate 
mechanism turning out a commercial product. 
They are not quite animals, and not altogether full- 
grown men. Here is the preacher's opportunity. 

Commercial forces are working to obliterate the 
individual. The small proprietor is disappearing. 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 89 

Little business houses are swallowed up, and the 
man who once had his name painted above the door 
reappears with diminished stature as a manager of a 
section in a great department store, behind whose 
counters thousands of human creatures carry on a 
business for men whom most of them have never 
seen, and to whom they one and all are personally 
unknown. Business men are rolling themselves 
into corporations, syndicates, and trusts, each man 
disappearing deeper and deeper into the ever 
increasing bulk of the corporate body. It is a 
maxim now that corporations have no souls, so com- 
pletely has the soul of the individual incorporator 
vanished from human sight. Here is the preacher's 
opportunity. 

Even organized philanthropy has a tendency to 
lose the individual. Philanthropists interest them- 
selves sometimes in sociological conditions simply 
as scientific phenomena. They study poverty, 
drunkenness, tuberculosis, as interesting social 
products. They publish volumes of statistics, 
giving a bird's-eye view of the dimensions of the 
vast ocean of want and woe, while manifesting no 
interest in any one broken family or any individual 
mangled life. Many good men are interested 
nowadays in the ocean, who have no disposition to 



90 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

look at the drops as they slip silently into the all- 
engulfing sea. Here is the preacher's opportunity. 
It is the lack of this personal touch which is 
multiplying our problems and deepening the black- 
ness of the human tragedy. One of the alarming 
facts of our world is the widespread absence of the 
sense of personal responsibility. In the labor 
world outrages are often perpetrated which it is 
impossible to trace to the door of any ascertainable 
malefactor. Men joined in a union sometimes do 
things which no one of them would think of doing 
if standing alone. In the business world dishonor- 
able and illegal operations are often carried on for 
which no one, apparently, is responsible. Men 
merged in corporations seem to become capable of 
performing deeds to which no one of them if left to 
himself would ever stoop. The sense of personal 
accountability decays when the distinctness of the 
individual fades. To keep the lines of individuality 
vivid and sharp, this is the work of the preacher. 
" Where art thou?" and "Where is thy brother?" 
these are the first questions which a religious teacher 
is bound to ask, and he must ask them with such an 
accent that every man within reach shall know 
that they are addressed to him. Personal responsi- 
bility both to God and to men is a theme for all 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 9 1 

times and places. If men lose sight of their own 
worth, they are sure to live unworthily. If they 
feel they are ciphers, they will not much concern 
themselves about their conduct. The moral lapses 
so common among immigrants in a new country are 
due largely to the decay of the sense of personal 
importance. In the old home they had a place 
which was recognized and a social significance widely 
acknowledged, but in the new land they are only 
insignificant drops in the human ocean, and what 
does it matter whether they cast back the sunlight 
from the crest of the billow or sink into the black 
ooze of the ocean bed? The demoralization of 
morals wrought by great cities is due to the crum- 
bling of the sense of individual accountability. 
Thousands of men and women in all the world's 
cities have lost their grip upon the high things of 
life, because no one but God sees them. There is 
no one on earth who cares for their souls. Men are 
lost to the church as soon as they are submerged 
in the crowd. This is the preacher's opportunity. 
When other men are thinking and talking about 
classes and masses and races, it is more than ever 
incumbent on the ambassador of Christ to keep his 
eye on the individual man. 

In fact the preacher is in danger of losing himself. 



92 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

All the brooks have swollen into rivers, and all the 
rivers have widened into lakes and oceans. There 
is a sea of printed matter in which ministers are 
easily engulfed, a flood of administrative work by 
which they are frequently swamped, an ocean of 
questions and problems beneath whose troubled 
waters their pulpit usefulness oftentimes goes down. 
It is not hard for a minister to lose himself among 
ambitious speculations and Utopian undertakings. 
Such words as "society," "humanity," "civiliza- 
tion," are enticing words to conjure with, and never 
has the temptation been greater than now to deal 
in spacious platitudes, unbounded generalizations, 
sweeping denunciations, and vaulting exhortations 
to nebulous duties whose contours are deeply 
buried in the mists. There are preachers who seem 
to be like Atlas, conscious that they are holding up 
the world. Unlike Atlas, however, their faces wear 
an anxious and despondent look. It would be better 
for them, and also for the cause of Christ, if they 
would roll the world from their shoulders upon the 
heart of God, and be content to carry simply the full 
weight of the responsibility for the spiritual develop- 
ment of the individual souls who make up their 
congregations. 

The preacher needs the individual as truly as the 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 93 

individual needs the preacher. Each human heart 
is a page in the great book of life which the preacher 
must learn to read. What can a minister know of 
death until he shuts himself up in a room with a man 
who is dying? How can he know anxiety at its 
highest until he stands by the bedside of the little 
invalid, and feels the heartbeats of a mother agoniz- 
ing over the failing breath of her child ? What can 
he know of poverty until he enters the home of a 
poor widow who is terrorized by the wolf at her 
door ? Remorse will be something real to him after 
he has witnessed the agony of a conscience-tor- 
mented man. He will preach better on the peace 
that passes understanding after he has looked upon 
a face in the hour of its spiritual transfiguration. 
It is in the experience of the individual soul that the 
preacher learns what this world is. The pathos of 
life comes out in the sob of some one human spirit. 
Human nature cannot be understood either in books 
or in crowds. It is only when one heart is pressed 
close against another heart, that heart secrets are 
communicated. The preacher remains cold, and 
his sermons are abstractions, until he folds his life 
down round the lives of individual men. It is for 
this reason that pastoral work is essential to the 
highest preaching. Preachers who shirk pastoral 



94 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

duty are always losers. They lose much themselves, 
and their churches lose still more. If orators, they 
may attract large audiences, but they do not do the 
work which is deepest and which lasts the longest. 
It is because preachers do not come close enough 
to individuals that they sometimes form an unhu- 
man style of speaking. To speak naturally ought 
to be the ambition of every preacher. He cannot 
afford to subtract from the force of his message 
by tones which repel or by intonations which offend. 
He ought to speak in the pulpit as a gentleman 
speaks when addressing his friends on matters of 
importance. If he uses tones never heard in the 
home, and cadences which would bring a laugh if 
used in any circle of society, he hurts the chances of 
his truth. The Christian pulpit has been a hotbed 
for the growth of all sorts of curious and unearthly 
tones. Twangs of various twists, singsongs of 
divers melodies, howls of different degrees of fury, 
and roars of many types of hideousness have tar- 
nished the fame of the pulpit and caused the ungodly 
to blaspheme. The cause of these vocal monstrosi- 
ties and outrages is that the preacher forgets he is 
talking to individual men. He thinks he is talking 
to the world, and that is why he shouts. He has 
the idea that he is preaching to the town, and con- 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 95 

sequently he roars. He imagines he is addressing 
a crowd, and his vocal mannerisms are caused by 
this foolish imagination. He gets his eye off the 
individual and his blunder reports itself at once in 
his elocution. The moment he comes out of the 
pulpit he speaks naturally. The most incorrigible 
pulpit howler or whiner speaks like a man as soon 
as he reaches the foot of the pulpit stairs. He is 
cured by remembering that he is talking to indi- 
viduals. Let him remember this in the pulpit, and 
many of his elocutionary sins will fold their tents 
like the Arabs. Preachers do not preach to society 
or humanity or civilization. They preach to men 
like themselves. When they come face to face 
with the individual heart their style becomes natu- 
ral, with every tone genuine and every inflection 
true. This is the cure also for diseases of rhetoric. 
There are stilts rhetorical as well as stilts elocu- 
tionary. A preacher who has imagination and a 
facile command of words is sure to go on rhetorical 
stilts unless he keeps his eye on the individual. 
The individual is the preacher's life-preserver. 
He is saved by him from unnaturalness. The natu- 
ral style is the clear style. The first duty of a 
preacher is to make himself easily understood. 
He must keep in contact with his hearers all along 



96 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

the sermonic way. To do this he must stand with 
both feet on the earth. Most laymen cannot fly. 
If the preacher soars into the clouds, he goes alone. 
The clouds are a sorry place for a preacher. The 
soaring preachers are not the preachers whom 
grown men like to listen to. Juveniles of all ages 
sit awestruck, but the judicious grieve. The Mas- 
ter stood ever on the ground. His greatest ser- 
mons were earnest conversations. He always spoke 
directly to the individual. He says, " Follow me." 
It is fidelity to the individual which insures a 
preacher's perennial freshness. Many preachers 
become after a time intolerable, because of their 
monotony. They lack variety both in the character 
of their subjects and in the manner of their treat- 
ment. All their sermons seem to be prepared for an 
imaginary being whose age and sex and spiritual 
development never change. Their congregation is 
to them simply a huge chunk of humanity, and to 
this living chunk they address their sermons. But 
a preacher who wishes to escape monotony must 
mentally differentiate his congregation into groups, 
and then disintegrate these groups into individuals. 
Each group must receive its meat in due season. 
When Paul wrote to Titus in regard to his work 
among the people in Crete, he gave him an outline 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 97 

of the kind of teaching needed by the older men, 
another outline was suggested for the young men, 
still another for the aged women, another for the 
young women, and a different outline still for the 
servants. The temptations of age are not the temp- 
tations of youth, nor are the problems of men the 
problems of women. Masters need the emphasis at 
one point, servants at another. Paul recognizes 
these distinctions and would have each class in- 
structed according to its capacities and needs. One 
cannot preach to everybody in general. There 
must be constant and keen-eyed discrimination. 
Truth must be cut into pieces according to the 
nature of those for whom it is intended. No one 
group in the congregation should be allowed to go 
hungry. Not one soul should be permitted to fall 
to the ground without the preacher's notice. 

It is the individual who has much to do with 
keeping the preacher a Christian believer. The 
preacher who works for the reconstruction of indi- 
vidual men has no difficulty in believing in the 
reality and power of sin, nor is he likely to lose his 
faith in Christ as Saviour. It is when one grapples 
hand to hand with a man in the bondage of sin, 
that he realizes the limitations of legislation and the 
impotency of reformatory panaceas. He faces for the 



98 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

first time the mystery of iniquity, and is not ashamed 
of the gospel, for he possesses demonstrative evidence 
that it is the power of God unto salvation to every 
one who believes. Men who nurse vague ambi- 
tions to lift the whole world frequently come to 
have foggy notions of the person of Christ. Losing 
one's grip on the incalculable value of a single soul 
seems to loosen one's grasp of the need of a personal 
Saviour. With the fading of the majesty of the 
individual the glory of the Divine Personality 
becomes dim. When the root trouble of the world 
is believed to be, not rebellion against God, but a 
faulty economic machinery, it is not easy to main- 
tain a passionate devotion to him who was called 
Jesus, because he was to save his people from their 
sins. There are well-intentioned men who have 
much to say about the Christian consciousness, 
Christian principles, and Christian influences, who 
have allowed the personal Christ to fall into the 
background of their thinking. When men aim to 
reform society in general they are apt to trust to 
social forces and humanitarian influences, but when 
they strive to redeem one man only, they are com- 
pelled to cast themselves on the omnipotent God in 
Christ. 

Work for the individual is essential not only for 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 99 

the maintenance of faith, but for keeping bright the 
flame of hope. It is by finding one man that the 
preacher saves himself from despair. A crowd is al- 
ways disconcerting, sometimes appalling. We are 
like Philip facing the five thousand whom he saw 
no way of feeding. It is only when we find in our 
congregation some one person — it may be only a 
lad — whose resources we can place in the hand of 
Christ, that light falls on the situation and the heart 
dares to entertain high expectations. To work for 
the bettering of the world as a whole is at the end 
of the day depressing. Changes are slow, steps of 
progress are infinitesimally small, the preacher is 
sure to die with the world apparently little better 
than it was in his boyhood. Unbelievers throw 
at him the taunting question, "Where is the fulfil- 
ment of the promise of his coming ? " But the 
man who brings the gospel to individual hearts has 
always at hand a book of evidence more convincing 
than any written by the wise men of the schools. 
It is the faces of redeemed men in the pews that keep 
the preacher's heart singing through the disillu- 
sionments and discomfitures of a lifelong campaign. 
The transfiguration of a single life proves that 
Jesus is a living and a present power, and makes it 
easy to believe that every knee will some day bow 



IOO BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

to him. The apostles faced with undaunted hearts 
angry and murderous Jerusalem because they could 
point to one jubilant man, and say, "By faith in His 
name hath his name made this man strong, whom ye 
behold and know." The preaching of Jesus 
was invincible, so long as one man kept crying, 
"Whereas I was blind, now I see." Preachers can 
work with patience and die in hope, if only they can 
see in the faces of men converted by their preaching 
the light of the glory of the knowledge of the blessed 
God. 

The individual is also the nourisher of love. One 
can love mankind in general, but it is a faint and 
feeble love, not the love that bursts into flame in 
sentences that burn their way into human hearts. 
It is when one heart touches another heart, that a 
fire is kindled which makes the whole church warm. 
There may be a growing interest in schemes and 
movements, with a progressive ossification of the 
heart. Love is the one thing essential for the man 
who would preach the gospel, and love is fed and 
cleansed and glorified by repeated contacts with 
individual hearts and lives. 

Let the preacher, then, seek and find the individ- 
ual. The glory of the temple is determined by the 
character of the material which is worked into it. 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL IOI 

The stones must be hewn, shaped, and polished, 
and laid each one in its place with care. It is 
impossible to build a beautiful church out of un- 
lovely material, to construct a glorious brother- 
hood out of unbrotherly Christians. Everything 
depends upon the character of the individual 
believer. The first thing to do is to separate him 
from his fellows and shut him in with God. Right 
relations must be established between him and 
the Eternal. The soul must feel its solitary relation 
to the Heavenly Father in order to realize to the 
full its obligations to the community. It is a high 
sense of individual responsibility to the Almighty, 
which is the basis of an enduring and fruitful altru- 
ism. Preaching must be clear at this point. The 
axe must be laid at the root of the tree. A man 
must be set right in his impulses and motives. He 
must be born again. It is easy to talk entertainingly 
of the sins of society and the prospects of humanity, 
but the critical business of the preacher is to put 
truth into the inward parts of the individual man. 
The man, having started in the Christian life, 
must be trained to look upon himself as a builder. 
He is the fashioner of the temple of his soul, and the 
work of building must be carried onward through 
all the years. As Paul says, he is to pass from glory 



102 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

to glory, each succeeding character being more 
splendid than the character which went before it. 
As Peter says, he is to work diligently, "in faith sup- 
plying virtue, in virtue knowledge, in knowledge 
temperance, in temperance patience, in patience 
godliness, in godliness love of the brethren, and in 
love of the brethren love." Many church members 
do not grow in grace or in the knowledge of Christ 
because their minister does not instruct them. 
The spiritual life has its beginning, successive stages, 
processes, crises, temptations, perils, diseases, 
lapses, laws of growth; and in all these matters the 
preacher ought to be an expert. Many congregations 
wander about like sheep not having a shepherd, 
even though there is a man in the pulpit preaching 
sermons. He is interested in general truths and in 
the world as a whole, but does not understand the 
laws of spiritual development nor the kind of in- 
struction by which the needs of the unfolding soul 
are satisfied. 

Every follower of Jesus is to be made a positive 
force for righteousness in the church and community. 
To accomplish this, preaching must be constructive. 
Men must be told what they are to do, rather than 
what they are not to do. It is by learning to do well 
that they will cease to do evil. If they are trained 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 1 03 

to walk in the spirit, they will not fulfil the lusts of 
the flesh. Many publications rail constantly at evil- 
doing, and not a few ministers have caught this 
denunciatory spirit. But evil is most certainly 
overwhelmed, not by fixing the eyes on the things 
that are bad, but by turning the heart to the 
things that are good. If there be any virtue or any 
praise, these are the things worth expounding. 
Let the preacher deny himself the luxury of hurling 
thunderbolts, and give himself to the quiet work of 
building men in well-doing. It is better to work 
for the growth of one virtuous person, as Milton 
long ago pointed out, than to toil for the restraint of 
ten vicious persons. It is wiser to train one man to 
take an interest in things which are worth while, 
than to storm mangincently against practices and 
fashions which one would like to see abolished. 
This is to be remembered when you are tempted 
to preach a course of twenty sermons against present- 
day evils or popular amusements. 

Christians are to be encouraged to develop the 
gift that is in them. Every soul is unique. For 
this reason the liberty of every individual is inexpres- 
sibly sacred. The rights of personality are never 
to be trespassed upon by the preacher. He must 
not expect all Christians to think alike, feel alike, 



104 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

work alike. He must not demand that they all 
shall be converted alike, pass through similar 
emotional experiences, be equally confident of the 
truthfulness of every phrase in the Christian creed. 
It is not necessary that a church member shall think 
and feel and work like the preacher or like the oldest 
and saintliest of the church officials. The church 
must be kept spacious. There must be room enough 
in it for all temperaments and constitutions, all 
grades of development, and all stages of culture. 
There must be liberty for many schools of thought 
and many types of service. To crush all Christians 
into a common mould is a sin against the Christ 
who wills that all men shall be free in him. The 
preacher who considers those laymen who differ 
from him as guilty of the sin against the Holy Spirit, 
which hath no forgiveness either in this world or in 
the world which is to come, is a man too narrow to 
be intrusted with the guidance of men's spiritual 
education. A preacher should rejoice if he preaches 
to men and women who think for themselves, and 
who have character sufficient to hold opinions differ- 
ent from his own. He should encourage every man 
to be himself, shining with his own peculiar glory. 
He should endeavor to throw round every member 
of his church the influences which will call into 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL I05 

blossom the potential strengths and beauties which 
flow native in the blood. It is in the variety of 
moral graces, and in the diversity of spiritual attain- 
ments, that the church finds its richest life and 
becomes able to perform its widest service. Build- 
ers use materials of many shapes and textures in the 
construction of a cathedral. 

Each member of the church is to be trained in the 
graces and obligations of brotherliness. He must 
be set at once in the midst of the brotherhood. You 
cannot put a man on a glass tripod and teach him 
brotherliness out of a book. He must learn brother- 
liness by being brotherly. He can be brotherly only 
when among brethren. To place each new convert 
in a circle of brothers, and to keep him there, is the 
work of the master preacher. A brotherhood can- 
not be built of men who are unbrotherly. One 
unbrotherly man in the circle of brothers works 
infinite confusion and mischief. Brotherliness is 
not a gift, but an attainment. It must be worked 
for through laborious years. It is not enough to 
have a brotherly intention, but the spirit must be 
disciplined and developed and trained. The obli- 
gations and duties of brotherliness must be learned 
and practised. The apostle who loved to think 
of the church as a temple also loved to think of each 



106 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

soul as a temple. The human personality is a 
shekinah. Every man is of value beyond computa- 
tion. To build him foursquare in love is the work 
of the preacher. You are not a builder unless 
you build. Unless you build men you are a theori- 
zer, a pedant, a declaimer. A doctor's business is 
not to know books, but to cure people. Your su- 
preme business is not to build sermons, but to build 
characters. The preacher who does not count it a 
glorious privilege to build into the temple of God one 
particular pillar by whose splendid proportions and 
exquisite finish the glory of the entire temple shall 
be enhanced, is not in harmony with the heart of 
him who says, "Him that overcome th will I make 
a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no 
more out ; and I will write upon him the name of 
my God, and the name of the city of my God." 

Peculiar attention to each and every particular 
part, this is the way of builders. A builder is a 
collectivist in his vision and an individualist in his 
method. Stone-masons to-day follow the fashion 
of the early Greeks in dressing one stone at a time. 
No matter what the size of the building, each stone 
receives definite and protracted attention. Our 
bricklayers follow the custom of the ancient Egyp- 
tians, and lay one brick at a time. No matter 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL I07 

how many millions of bricks are to be laid, each 
brick is handled separately, for although the world 
is rich in inventions, no time-saving apparatus has 
thus far been devised to put out of use the traditional 
practice. The carpenter drives one nail at a time. 
He persists in this, no matter how large the contract 
or how pressed he is for time. The ingenuity of 
man has not created a device to supersede the 
time-honored procedure of driving nails one nail at a 
time. Surrounded by the miracle-working machin- 
ery of a new age, the builder clings doggedly to a 
policy which is old. Go to the builder, young 
preacher, consider his ways, and be wise. 

It is the social aim of the builder which compels 
him to be an individualist in his method. A col- 
lectivist in vision, he is bound to be an individualist 
in practice. A building is an aggregate thing, and 
becomes possible only by a careful shaping of its 
constituent parts. It is the building as a whole 
which dictates to the builder what he is to do with 
each particular piece. Every part must be moulded 
with regard to every other part, for the parts must 
fit together in order to form the symmetrical whole. 
The nobler the edifice the more abundant the labor 
which is expended upon the individual stones. 
When a Parthenon is to be built, there is not a block 



108 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

of marble, however small, upon which genius will 
not do its perfect work. 

The preacher is a builder, and like all builders 
he must see things in the large, and he must have an 
eye also for things which are small. He must gaze 
often at the finished temple, the glowing ideal let 
down from heaven, and he must study the possibili- 
ties of each and every living stone whose contribu- 
tion of strength and beauty is to augment the splen- 
dor of the completed whole. The world is indeed 
the subject of redemption, but the world is to be re- 
deemed one man at a time. Men cannot be made 
Christians in masses. That was the rock over 
which the Christian church first stumbled. It was 
in the days of Constantine that men first came into 
the church in crowds, and with the coming of the 
crowds began the early stages of a long eclipse. The 
cause of Christ has been indefinitely retarded be- 
cause the church, eager to make haste, received men 
into her fold by tribes and baptized them by battal- 
ions. It is only when the church is willing to deal 
with one man at a time that the thrones of the king- 
dom of Satan are shaken, and that with the tread 
of a conquerer she strides toward the goal. Her 
vision must ever be social, but her method cannot be 
other than individualistic. It is her work to trans- 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 109 

form society; but society is made of individuals, and 
the character of the individuals fixes the character of 
society. It is her mission to elevate public opinion; 
but public opinion is simply the opinion of indi- 
viduals, and the ruling opinion of a community is 
determined by the character of its citizens. En- 
vironment is a mighty factor in the moulding of life, 
but environment is after all made up of souls. 
Material surroundings are simply the creation of 
souls. In order to change the environment there 
must be a transformation of souls, and souls are 
re-created one at a time. The supreme work of the 
preacher is the changing of souls. If he turns aside 
to anything else, the service which humanity most 
needs is left unperformed. If the preacher is eager 
to alter the structure of the world, let him devote 
himself passionately to the work of bringing men 
one at a time to God in Christ. 

This was the way of Peter. He began the work of 
social betterment by taking by the hand one of the 
many lame men in Jerusalem. The hand of one 
strong man clasping the hand of one man who could 
not walk is the frontispiece of the huge volume of 
church history. The beautiful deed at the beauti- 
ful gate teaches the lesson of Christian individual- 
ism. When Peter opened the door for the incoming 



IIO BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

of the Gentile world, he opened it for one man — 
Cornelius. Paganism in the mass did not present 
itself as an applicant for baptism. Only individuals 
were received to whom had been granted the gift of 
the Holy Spirit. 

This was Paul's way. It was not all Europe 
which appealed to him in his dreams, but one solitary 
and pleading suppliant. When he reached Philippi, 
it was not to the city that he announced the good 
tidings, but to a few humble women who had 
not lost their faith in prayer. Paul found his way 
into the heart of a new continent through the 
heart of one woman — Lydia. His mission was to 
admonish every man, to teach every man, that he 
might present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. 
It was worth while to pray and labor for one poor 
runaway slave — Onesimus. Breaking the bondage 
of one miserable demented girl was a triumph 
never to be forgotten. The particularizing genius 
of Paul reveals itself in all his letters. He had an 
extraordinary eye for the individual. It was the 
names of the men and women whom he personally 
knew which made much of the music of his prayers, 
and it was the memory of the particular persons 
with whom he had labored and suffered and 
triumphed that braced his heart in hours of loneli- 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL III 

ness and peril, and opened up springs of gratitude 
and affection which flowed unceasingly. The man 
stands revealed in sentences such as these : " Salute 
Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ 
Jesus ;" " Salute Epaenetus my beloved ;" " Salute 
Mary who bestowed much labor on you; " " Sa- 
lute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my 
fellow-prisoners . ' ' 

This was the way of the Lord himself. He 
startled men by the piercing and particularizing 
glances of his eyes. "When sawest thou me?" 
was a cry which burst from the lips of many. A 
woman supposed that she could hide herself in a 
crowd. A widow in the temple casting in her two 
mites did not dream that she was observed in the 
throng. He singled out a poor invalid at the pool 
of Bethesda whom no one had seen for nearly forty 
years. His heart was set on winning the classes, and 
so he paid assiduous attention to one man — Nico- 
demus. His soul yearned for the masses, and hence 
he gave himself to one degraded woman at the well. 
He longed to reach the uttermost part of the earth, 
and made the start by changing the heart of one 
man. It was the social vision that increased his 
zeal in working for the individual. It was because 
Jerusalem was on his heart that he was glad to 



112 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

brighten the life of one of her blind beggars. It 
was because he carried the world in his eye that he 
could see so clearly the strategic importance of the in- 
dividual soul. The social order was iniquitous, and 
men begged him to strike it. He struck it by chang- 
ing the spirit of a few peasants. The political order 
was corrupt, and men importuned him to overthrow 
it. He undermined it by raising the ideals of a few 
citizens. The economic system worked injustice 
and oppression, and men hated him because he did 
not overturn it with the point of his sword. He 
signed its death warrant by writing his name on the 
hearts of a few disciples. Outside of Palestine the 
nations lay moaning in the darkness. He saw them, 
and therefore steadfastly devoted himself to the 
building of twelve men. Of course the world called 
him narrow, foolish, crazy, devil-possessed; but he 
pursued his method to the end. His life's work 
seemed a failure. When he hung dying on the 
cross, Judea was as sordid, Samaria as lethargic, 
Galilee as worldly minded as when with radiant face 
he preached his first sermon in the synagogue at 
Nazareth. The Roman Empire was as cruel and the 
nations were as far from God when he cried upon the 
cross, "It is finished !" as when at his baptism he 
saw the heavens opened. But he did not die baffied 



BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 113 

or discouraged. " Be of good cheer, I have overcome 
the world." The world order was apparently un- 
altered, but here and there a human heart had 
caught his vision — the vision of a loving, sacrificing 
God, interested in each and every one of all his 
children, and with this his soul was satisfied. Just 
a few men aflame with the vision of God will 
change the atmosphere of society, and if you give 
them time, they and their successors will make 
new the structure of the world. 

Christianity is the religion of the brotherhood. It 
is also the religion of the one man, the one man in 
and for the brotherhood. It is the religion of the 
one sheep, the one coin, the one boy. It is the reli- 
gion which throws its arms around "one of these 
little ones," and which hears angels rejoicing over one 
sinner who repents. It is the religion which closets 
each man with God and which beholds each man 
alone at the judgment. It is the religion which pic- 
tures the Son of God standing on the doorstep, saying, 
" Behold I stand at the door and knock ; if any man 
hear my voice and open the door, I will come in 
to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." 

This is God's way. He is the individualizing 
God. He is mindful of the one sparrow. The hairs 
of each human head are all numbered. We come 



114 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 

into the world one at a time. Between the cradle 
and the grave we each tread a path wide enough for 
only one pair of feet. We pass into eternity one by 
one. God delights in the work of shaping and guid- 
ing the individual. Science tells us that life began 
upon our planet in jellylike, undifferentiated masses. 
From the begininng, however, all the forces worked 
unceasingly toward segregation and diversification, 
until by and by the individual was set free. With the 
advent of the individual there began new wonders. 
Within the individual the Lord of life added miracle 
to miracle, until in a glorious moment human 
personality emerged. The personality was at first 
rudimentary and inchoate, with all its endowments 
embryonic. In the early ages of human history the 
individual is obliterated in the tribe, lost in the na- 
tion, merged in the life of institutions ; but through 
the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the 
individual man gradually increases in wisdom and 
stature, until he at last steps forth in Christ the 
sovereign of the world. What is history but a long- 
drawn drama in which the individual comes pain- 
fully but irresistibly, and with the manifest favor 
of God, to his own? Every form of collectivism 
is doomed which does not develop the combined 
energies and safeguard the total liberties and 






BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 115 

rights of the individual man. Evolution has in 
many directions come to an end. The evolution 
of personality still goes forward. It does not 
yet appear what we shall be. We only know we 
shall be like him in whom and for whom we were 
created. His Father had been working for ages 
upon the individual man, and Jesus consecrated him- 
self to the selfsame work. He began always with 
"a certain man." His word to us is, "Follow me !" 
God is building human personalities. That is 
our work also. We are co-laborers with him. 
Great preaching is preaching which sets free the 
latent energies of the soul and builds up rich and 
potent personalities. All great preachers are alike 
in this, they create by their preaching resourceful, 
masterful, and Godlike men. The greatest gift 
which the church can give the world is a full-grown 
man, having in him the mind of Jesus. Measure 
your success as preachers not by the size of your con- 
gregation, which may after all be only a huge eccle- 
siastical jellyfish, drifting aimlessly and uselessly 
through the social sea, but by the stature and girth 
of the manhood which you develop in individual 
believers, by the brotherliness and serviceableness 
and Christlikeness of the separate disciples whom 
you build into the Christian brotherhood. 



LECTURE IV 
BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

Having weighed the importance of viewing men 
separately, let us now look at them massed together. 
A Christian congregation is a human unit, and in a 
sense may be said to have a soul. Each member 
of the congregation contributes a separate character 
to form a composite character wonderful and unique. 
A power proceeds from each individual heart, and 
all these separate powers, when blended, constitute 
another and a higher form of power. A congrega- 
tion of a thousand persons is something more than 
a thousand individuals. When men come together, 
certain latent forces are set free, and heightened 
capacities of thinking and feeling are unfolded in 
them. Where two or three are assembled, the Lord 
of Life is present in a way in which He is not present 
with the isolated soul. When two or three unite in 
prayer, heaven is responsive to degrees never reached 
when men pray separately. There are things to be 
done, therefore, with and for the church as a whole. 
A congregation possesses a disposition as pronounced 
and characteristic as that of any of its members. 

119 - 



120 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

This disposition must be moulded by the preacher. 
The moulding process passes through its most critical 
stages in the hours of public worship. The preacher 
is not simply an instructor, he is a fashioner of 
character, a maker of those moods and tempers 
which gave character its bent and sinew. He is a 
builder, and his business is to construct a frame of 
mind. 

He will do this in part by his sermons, and in 
part by other agencies ordained of God for the fos- 
tering of godly dispositions. Ideas have in them 
transforming power, and so also do certain attitudes 
and exercises. It is not the intellect only which is 
to be reached, but that great mass of instincts 
and sentiments which go to make up what we call 
the heart. Young preachers are always in danger 
of overestimating the intellect. Hungry themselves 
for ideas, and skilful in the art of playing with them, 
they not infrequently lose sight of those mighty, 
moving forces of the soul which lie deeper than all 
thought, and upon which religious leaders who would 
do enduring work must evermore rely. Genuine 
and living worship is something which every 
preacher covets for his church, but not every 
preacher gives himself devotedly to the work of 
opening the fountains from which the living streams 






BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 121 

of worship flow. If songs and prayers are not to 
shrivel on the lips, there must be a rich interior 
life, ministered unto according to laws which the 
preacher ought to know. Every preacher is desir- 
ous that his people shall abound in good works, but 
the impulse to work for God must be liberated 
and strengthened, and this impulse has its home 
and growth down in the deep places of the heart. 
Many preachers accomplish little because they 
do not go deep enough. They cater to the intellect, 
but do not stir the emotions. They offer sacrifices 
on the altar of logic and forsake the God-established 
altar of sentiment. They teach men the phrases of 
an argument, but do not train them to sing a Te 
Deum. They labor to instruct them to understand, 
but not to adore and wonder. In one church the 
minister is always preaching about work. He goads 
his people incessantly to action. If men only are 
doing something, life's problem is supposed to be 
settled. Themes for contemplation are steadily 
ignored. No attention is devoted to the deepening 
of the channels of the emotions. The inner springs 
are quite forgotten. Men are told what they ought 
to do, but no attention is devoted to the creation of 
those dispositions out of which fruitful activity 
proceeds. Such a church invariably grows thin. 



122 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

People are worn out by the everlasting exhortation 
to be up and doing. The clank of machinery is al- 
ways in their ears. The life of the church is a dusty 
plain. There is no mount of transfiguration. It 
is all street and no upper chamber. The souls of 
men are impoverished. 

In another church the preacher is always explain- 
ing something. He has a philosophic mind, and de- 
lights in industrial entanglements, moral problems, 
doctrinal obscurities, and spiritual paradoxes. He 
speaks always to the intellect, and to that little 
corner of it which is interested in speculative puz- 
zles. He leaves the heart out of account. He does 
nothing to stimulate or nourish the feelings. He 
shirks the work of building habits of humility, 
gratitude, and rejoicing. He does not know that 
men live by admiration, hope, and love. It is the 
heart which makes a preacher, and it is the heart 
which makes a church. The emotions give life its 
glow and glory. A starved heart means an en- 
feebled church. We have, then, these two classes 
of defective churches. In the first class, the 
church is an office in which various kinds of transac- 
tions are discussed and forwarded ; in the second 
class, it is a schoolroom in which divers doctrines 
and systems are unfolded and adorned. Blessed is 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 23 

the preacher who converts his church into a temple, 
and who, with or without pictured windows and 
without or with the help of ritual and rich architec- 
ture, creates by the conduct of the service an at- 
mosphere in which souls instinctively look Godward. 
Atmosphere is everything. If a church lacks at- 
mosphere, we need not wonder that many will prefer 
to stay at home. The church must give something 
which no other institution in the town can offer. 
There must be something in the sanctuary which 
the heart can instantly recognize as having come 
from upper worlds, and which will compel it to cry 
out : "This is none other than the house of God. 
This is the gate of heaven." When a Christian man 
says he can get more help from books at home than 
from the service of public worship, it is because his 
nature is abnormal or because there is a fatal defect 
in the church service. To build a worshipping 
mood in his congregation, to create an atmosphere 
in which souls shall stand awe-struck in the pres- 
ence of their Creator, is a cardinal part of the 
preacher's stupendous task. 

He cannot accomplish this without using all the 
agencies which the Holy Spirit has honored through 
the centuries. To make the sermon the be-all and 
the end-all of public worship is a devastating 



124 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

blunder. Ministers who crowd praise and prayer 
into a corner, labelling them " preliminaries, " do 
not know what they do. Among other things, they 
cut down the size of their possible congregation. 
The worshipping instinct is more deeply seated than 
is the sermon-hearing instinct, and more nearly 
universal. Many minds and hearts respond to the 
call to prayer which make no reply to the summons 
of a sermon. Little children drink in the music, 
and then fall asleep in the midst of the preacher's 
noblest argument. Plain and unlettered folk, 
lacking the intellectual discipline which enables 
them to follow the thread of a learned discourse, 
find relief and uplift in pouring out their hearts to 
God in song and prayer. Cultivated Christians, 
uninterested in the particular discussion or exhor- 
tation of the day, will go home edified if the service 
has been what it ought to be. Business men, 
fagged and jaded by the week's hard work, reluctant 
to grapple with a reasoned argument, are more 
likely to go to church if they are sure of rinding 
there that which lifts and cleanses and furnishes 
them surcease of care. We preachers minister to a 
myriad-sided human nature, with manifold appetites 
and cravings, and the sermon is only one of many 
channels through which God's grace finds the soul. 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 25 

Not only does the preacher increase the size of his 
congregation by ministering to men's devotional 
nature, but he expands its capacity for assimilating 
his message. Preaching is a reciprocal business. It 
is a matter of giving and taking, and the taking is 
no less important than the giving. A sermon is a 
joint product, the creation of the preacher and the 
people. The prosperity of a sermon depends both 
on the tongue that speaks and also on the ear that 
hears. What matters it how consecrated and able 
the preacher, if the minds of the hearers are not 
prepared for his message ? After the experiences of 
the week, men and women are in no mood on the 
Lord's day to listen without preparation to a spirit- 
ual message. Confusions and distractions must be 
removed from the mind. Alienations and resent- 
ments must be cleansed from the heart. The stains 
of recent sin must be washed from the spirit. Men 
have been laboring in separated fields, each one shut 
in by the bounds of his own specific task, and on the 
first day of the week they emerge from their isolation 
and all are together in one place. Discordant feel- 
ings must be reduced to harmony. Wandering 
thoughts must be subdued to reverent attention. 
The sermon goes forth in vain unless the congrega- 
tion is unified and hearts have become responsive 



126 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

and docile. Music and prayer are God's instru- 
ments for the taming of lawless impulses, and for the 
creation of spiritual unities and harmonies. A 
reverent mood is indispensable to the victory of a 
sermon. Reverence is the mother of attention, 
and men in their reverent moments listen gladly to 
truths whose home is in heavenly places. The 
more completely socialized the congregation, the 
more swiftly will the word of the Lord run and be 
glorified. He is an ignorant preacher who strives 
to make his sermon everything. By making it 
more than it can be, he makes it less than it 
might be. 

To the preacher who desires the mightiest 
possible effect for his sermon, there are no prelimi- 
naries in the order of public worship. From the 
opening tone of the organ onward to the benedic- 
tion, the service is a high and solemn transaction 
with God. The first thing essential in a Christian 
congregation is a reverential mood. The fear of 
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and without it a 
church service is empty and debilitating. To create 
and sustain this mood, the preacher must understand 
the value of silence and the indispensable influence 
of forms. It is for him so to plan as to secure those 
physical conditions which will enable the service 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 27 

to go forward unmarred and unimpeded. The 
worship must not be allowed to be trampled under 
the careless feet of late comers. Ushers must not 
flit up and down the aisles during the reading of the 
Scriptures or the singing of the anthem. Belated 
stragglers must not be granted a permit to proceed 
to their pews during the prayers. All late comers 
should be detained at the church door, and be 
permitted to take their seats only at stated pauses 
in the service provided for their accommodation. 
It is astonishing how careless many ministers are 
in the conduct of public worship. In ignorance or 
contempt of eternal spiritual laws, they allow the 
worship to degenerate into a slovenly and slipshod 
thing, devoid of all power to solemnize and elevate 
the heart. 

Forms of worship are sacraments, visible signs of 
an invisible grace. There are ministers who seem 
to be afraid of them. Informality alone, so they 
think, is pleasing to the Almighty. To act in the 
house of God as one carries himself at home, and to 
speak to the High and Holy One who inhabits 
eternity, in the familiar, unconventional phrases 
of everyday life, is to them the only sure safeguard 
against formality and superstition. We do well 
indeed to be on our guard against formalism, for 



128 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

formalism is the use of forms run to seed. But 
forms are ordained of God. When rightly used, 
they educate and bless. They are not only the 
conservators, but the nourishers, of the life of the 
heart. Without forms life cannot maintain itself 
at high levels. It is by its forms that government 
renders itself majestic, and society maintains its 
tone. Religion is wedded to form by the will of 
God. Posture in prayer is not a trifle. Behavior 
in the house of God is a factor in the moulding 
of character. The heart life is kept warm and true 
by fine fidelity to the modes and patterns by which 
it expresses itself. The forms of devotion in the 
church should be kept dignified and beautiful. 
Informality is not evidence of piety nor a scorn of 
forms proof of exalted spirituality. It is fitting that 
in the house of God worshippers shall show in their 
outer conduct their sense of their sinfulness and 
their consciousness of standing in the presence of an 
infinite and holy God. In the making of moods, 
forms are as essential as moulds are in the shaping 
of bricks. 

In the building of a reverential mood, no form of 
worship is so efficacious as public prayer. It is 
written that the apostolic church " continued stead- 
fastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 29 

in the breaking of bread and the prayers. " The 
men who were converted on the Day of Pentecost 
kept themselves alive by prayer. When the work of 
church administration began to absorb too much 
of the apostles' energy and time, they threw off this 
burden upon the shoulders of other men, declaring 
that it was their supreme business to give them- 
selves to prayer and the ministry of the word. 
The preacher must always be a man of prayer. His 
spirit must be deeply devotional. If by nature he 
is not reverential, then by constant and arduous 
discipline he must bring his nature into subjection. 
He will give his days and nights to the study of the 
classics of the devotional literature of the church, 
and will meditate often upon the themes which have 
in them most power to solemnize and open the heart. 
Of Saul of Tarsus it was said, "Behold he prays !" 
This is the starting-point of all successful preaching. 
Only men constant in prayer preach the gospel 
with power. The preacher must lead his people in 
prayer. He must pray for them and with them. 
His prayers are in reality sermons. They are a part 
of his publication of the love of God. They are 
not picturesque and ceremonious preliminaries, 
moving in advance of his sermons, but are in them- 
selves messages of his soul, opening up the way to 



I30 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

God. All public prayer is of necessity seen of men, 
and the form of it is consequently not to be despised 
or slighted. The form must be such as to help the 
flow of the devotional feeling of the congregation. 
Any feature of the prayer which rasps or jars, sub- 
tracts from the power of the Holy Spirit in lifting 
hearts to heavenly altitudes. A preacher can shake 
the entire fabric of a church's devotion by awkward 
and ill-mannered praying. Prayer is a form of 
power, and the force of it can be broken by slipshod 
sentences and rambling repetitions and effusive 
clamorings. The spirit of the prayer must of course 
be right, but so also must its substance and form. 
It is the duty, therefore, of the preacher to prepare 
his prayers, — or at least to prepare for them, — and 
no part of his work is more critical and taxing. 
So immense is the labor involved that many men 
shrink from it, either offering prayers entirely ex- 
tempore, or entering a denomination which furnishes 
the relief of a liturgy. A man can read a prayer or 
he can roll out offhand a string of prayer-shaped 
sentences without spiritual preparedness; but to lead 
a congregation week after week, year after year, 
to the throne of grace along paths of the preacher's 
own choosing lays a tax upon human nature to which 
it is not easy to submit. The man who uses a liturgy 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 131 

is always tempted to rely upon the form rather than 
the spirit, and the man who throws away the liturgy 
is subjected to a temptation no less insidious and 
disastrous. Extemporaneous prayer is a form of 
liberty which harbors a multitude of sins. It is 
often taken for granted that because a man is given 
the privilege of framing each Sunday his own prayers 
he holds a license to mould them on the spur of the 
moment. The result is that in many a church there 
is a type of confused and deformed praying which is 
both scandalous and insufferable . Many a Chris- 
tian of cultivation has been driven into a liturgical 
church, because he could endure no longer the un- 
kempt and boorish prayers of his pastor. Men and 
women of refinement cannot be led to the throne of 
grace by a man who lacerates all the nerves of taste 
at every step in his supplications. Prayers as 
well as sermons must be prepared, not necessarily 
in every phrase and word, but by meditation and a 
careful survey, first of the needs of the congrega- 
tion and then of the needs of the church universal. 
There was a superstition once that prepared sermons 
were an abomination to the Lord, inasmuch as that 
they interfered with the operation of the Holy 
Spirit upon the preacher's brain and heart in the hour 
when he stood before the people. Happily for the 



I32 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

world that superstition has passed away. Experi- 
ence has proved that the Holy Spirit has better 
opportunity to work his will through a sermon 
which has been prepared by long and patient labor, 
than through the flighty and rhapsodical mouthings 
of a preacher averse to study. There is another 
superstition from which the church is not yet quite 
emancipated, the notion that a man can pray more 
sincerely and more nearly in accordance with God's 
will, if he trusts entirely to the guidance of the 
Spirit as that guidance is offered at the passing 
moment. The two superstitions are alike. Effec- 
tive sermons cannot be, ordinarily, left to the caprice 
or feeling of the moment, nor can a congregation be 
most surely led to the throne of God by a man who 
starts upon the journey not knowing by what route 
he is going. Stumbling here and there, retracing 
one's steps now and then, using the wrong adjective 
or adverb because the right one will not come, 
these may be small matters to the Almighty, but 
they are not small to men; and as the preacher is 
praying for the sake of those who listen, he is bound 
to use such verbal forms as shall best open men's 
hearts for the incoming of God's spirit. 

The content of prayer must also be carefully 
considered. Paul was particular, not only about 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 133 

the spirit and manner of prayer, but also about the 
petitions which should have a place in the worship 
of the Christian society. He desired that the 
prayers should have reach and range. They were 
to include not only the men at the bottom, but also 
the men at the top. Rulers and kings were not 
to be forgotten, even though they had no sympathy 
with the Christian faith. All sorts and conditions 
of men were to be remembered, because it is God's 
wish that all men shall be saved. The prayers in 
the church were not to be folded round the local 
congregation, or even the church universal; they 
were to include the wide world. There was to be 
a reach to the prayers, and a breadth, and depth. 
The length and the breadth and the height were to 
be equal. Not every preacher lives up to the 
apostle's ideal. Public prayer often becomes con- 
tracted in range, and is brought down to levels 
lower than those on which the prayer of the church 
ought to move. By carelessness in the shaping of 
his prayers, a preacher may stunt not only his own 
nature, but the spiritual sympathies and suscepti- 
bilities of his people. If in his prayers he carries 
on his heart the church universal and all nations 
and races, his church will do likewise. More 
things are wrought by the preacher's prayers than 



134 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

the preacher himself dreams of. There have been 
ages in Christian history when the prayers drove 
out the sermon. There are churches in our age 
in which there is danger that the sermon may drive 
out the prayers. Both are ordained of God, 
and what God hath joined, let no preacher put 
asunder. 

Music is also a form of power which may be used 
for the creation of those particular tempers in which 
the Christian religion finds delight. The gift of 
song is primeval. Man is by nature musical. By 
divine fiat he is a singing animal. Men have from 
the beginning loved music. There is a Lamech sing- 
ing in the early dawn of the history of every people, 
and a Jubal fashioning harps and pipes. The 
Jewish church seized upon this natural aptitude and 
made use of it in the temple service, in every syna- 
gogue, and in every Jewish home. On the night 
on which Jesus was betrayed, he and his disciples, 
true to the traditions of their nation, sang psalms. 
Our Lord went into the shadows of Gethsemane 
singing. What the Jewish church did well, the 
Christian church has done still better. It was never 
known how much music lies in the human soul, till 
the angels sang their song of peace and good-will, 
and Jesus mellowed the hearts of men by his heav- 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 135 

enly message. Music as we know it may be said 
to be the daughter of the Christian church. By 
liberating the heart, Christianity made a new devel- 
opment of music inevitable. When Pliny lifts the 
curtain and enables us to look upon a first century 
congregation in the act of worship, we behold it 
singing. The church of Christ has been singing ever 
since the Day of Pentecost. It is significant that 
with the coming of each new baptism of the Spirit 
there has come a fuller flood of song. The Lollards 
rilled all England with their singing, and the followers 
of Luther struck terror into the Catholic hierarchy 
by their carols. The Wesleyans announced by their 
singing that a new epoch in Christian history had 
dawned. From the days of the apostles to the last 
church revival, it is true that when the Spirit of 
God moves mightily, the people burst into song. 
This is because music is the language of the heart. 
Song is the natural speech of the emotions. When 
the heart is stirred, it stings. By singing it stirs 
itself still more deeply. Music not only expresses, 
but intensifies, the feelings. The mood which a 
song expresses is strengthened and perpetuated by 
the singing of the song. No man sings to himself. 
He sings also unto others. He communicates his 
mood to those who hear him. When men and 



136 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

women sing together, they impart to one another 
the sentiment of that which they sing, and thus 
community of feeling is established, and spirits are 
brought into beautiful accord. If by prayer the 
human heart is awed and elevated, then by song the 
human heart is socialized and broadened. Music 
expands the sympathies and feeds the social nature. 
Self-centredness and exclusiveness melt down un- 
der the reign of melody. Touched by the spell 
of harmonious tones, minds and hearts flow to- 
gether, and the congregation becomes one soul. 
Music is a language universal. Every heart can 
understand it. Sentimentally every man is dis- 
posed to music, even though organically he may be 
like Charles Lamb, incapable of a tune. In music 
there is something heavenly before which earthly 
moods and worldly tempers inevitably give way. 
The basest man feels less sordid after he has been 
immersed in a fountain of song. ■ The streams of 
tone wipe out dividing lines, efface the springs of 
bitterness, wear away estranging walls, and bring 
the congregation out into a large and wealthy 
place. Music, when rightly used, does the very 
work which the preacher wants accomplished. It 
develops the sense of fellowship and builds up the 
brotherhood. 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 137 

Like all things divine, music is dangerous. Many 
churches have what they call the music problem. 
Sometimes it is a music scandal. Many a preacher 
has heard the most heart-racking discords of his 
parish proceeding from the music. Music may con- 
vert itself into a peacock and exist only for the sake 
of display. Display in the house of God is abomi- 
nable, and music when used for display, instead of 
being an angel to build up, becomes a devil to tear 
down. The preacher will therefore be watchful 
as to the personality and spirit of the man who is 
chosen leader of the church music. The musical 
director must be a Christian man. He is an ap- 
pointed minister of Christ, and must therefore have 
the spirit of Christ. The man who leads the service 
in which emotion is predominant and the man 
who leads the service in which thought is regnant 
have equal need of the baptism which comes from 
heaven. A church should no more think of placing 
its music in the hands of an unchristian man than of 
inviting to the pulpit a man making no professions 
of Christian discipleship. How can a pagan and 
a Christian work together in Christ's temple? 
More than one church has been unaccountably 
blind at this point, and has paid more than double 
for its unpardonable blunder. 



I38 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

With the musical direction in the hands of a Chris- 
tian man, large latitude may be allowed in the selec- 
tion of musical forms. There is no reason why a 
part of the musical service should not be led by one 
voice, or by two voices, or by three or four or eight 
voices, or by a chorus of a large number of voices. 
One voice can do what many voices cannot do, and 
a quartette can do things which are Impossible to 
a soloist or a chorus. In the interpretation of the 
musical masterpieces of adoration and thanksgiving, 
there are diversities of ministrations, and the same 
Lord; and diversities of workings, but the same 
God who worketh all things in all. The one thing 
to insist on is that the people shall be granted their 
rightful place in the worship. All the people must 
be given opportunity to sing. The entire company 
of the redeemed must utter praises. Worship must 
not be monopolized by a class. All Christians are 
priests unto God. To silence the congregation is to 
quench the Spirit. If the church prefers to remain 
dumb, it is because its life is at low ebb. A silent 
church must be trained to become vocal. Only a 
songful church can listen appreciatively to a sermon 
or engage triumphantly in Christian service. If 
the people sing badly, the next step is not to clip the 
hymns and lengthen the sermon, but to make room 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 139 

for additional hymns. If a church does not like 
to sing, it is because it is emotionally depleted. 
New life can be imparted, not by increased intellec- 
tuality in the pulpit, but by a freer exercise of the 
heart in the pews. When Paul exhorts Christians 
to awake from their sleep and to arise from the dead, 
he bids them to speak one to another in psalms and 
hymns and spiritual songs, making melody with 
their hearts to the Lord, giving thanks alway for all 
things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God. 
Singing is not then a preliminary of the sermon, 
something to be indulged in until the late comers 
have arrived, or an interloper to be watched con- 
stantly with a jealous eye, but a sort of preaching, 
a public proclamation of the goodness and long- 
suffering kindness of God. It is a means of grace 
and helps one to say, "I believe in the communion 
of saints." The preacher who wishes to bring his 
church into the attitude and disposition of Christ, 
and to fortify it against unchristian tempers, will 
steadily make use of the tongues of his people in the 
musical exercises of praise. Many a minister would 
to-day have a larger and more responsive congrega- 
tion, had he only persistently and systematically 
encouraged his people to take part in the service of 
song. 



140 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

Bible reading is another agency ordained by God 
for the creation and upbuilding of moods. Like 
prayer and song, it is also a form of preaching. It 
antedates our modern sermon. Through centuries 
of Jewish history the reading of the scriptures was 
the chief source of instruction and inspiration to 
the people. At the council of Jerusalem, James 
identified preaching and reading when he said, 
"Moses from generations of old hath in every city 
them that preach him, being read in the synagogue 
every Sabbath." Why should we not regard the 
public reading of holy scripture as a form of preach- 
ing, not a preliminary to be hurried through while 
the members of the congregation are rinding their 
pews, but an integral and cardinal part of the preach- 
ing service ? It is strange indeed that any man who 
believes in the unique inspiration of the men who 
wrote the Scriptures should be willing to read the 
Bible with lukewarm and begrudging emphasis, put- 
ting his own words in the place of honor, and using 
the sentences of prophets and apostles and the 
Lord himself as humble avenues leading up to the 
splendid palace of his own august creation. If it 
be true that God of old time spoke in the prophets 
by divers portions and in divers manners, and that 
at the end of those days spoke to us in his Son, it 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 141 

is certainly unbecoming in preachers to read the 
Scriptures with conspicuous negligence or hurry 
through them as though they were a barrier shut- 
ting men out from the rich pastures of the sermon. 
And if it be a fact, as Paul declares, that " every 
Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for 
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
which is in righteousness, that the man of God may 
be complete, furnished completely unto every good 
work," it would seem that the preacher has no more 
important duty than reading these Scriptures to 
his people. 

There are reasons why Bible reading in the 
church should just now be exalted. We are living 
in a hurried age, and the pressure of life is tremen- 
dous. Men are driven through the days and weeks 
as by so many furies, and because of this precipi- 
tate haste, certain customs which flourished in the 
former times are falling into desuetude. Family 
worship is not so common in Christian homes as it 
was a generation ago, and the Bible has been sup- 
planted in many circles by the magazines and papers. 
Let the preacher read the Bible to a generation too 
preoccupied to read it for itself. During the entire 
lifetime of men now living, the Bible has been the 
subject of vehement and distracting controversy. 



142 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

The old theories of inspiration and inerrancy have 
been found untenable, and a new conception has 
not yet been completely formed in the popular mind 
and heart. Laymen in large numbers are bewil- 
dered by the swarms of critical theories as to the 
origin and authority of the Bible, and from this 
bewilderment many preachers themselves have not 
emerged. The movement of Biblical criticism was 
inevitable. It is not to be lamented, but rejoiced 
over. Scores of conscientious scholars have labored 
with enthusiasm and fidelity to ascertain the facts 
in regard to authorship, and the formation of the 
canon. Results have been obtained, numerous, 
substantial, and invaluable. But in all such move- 
ments there is much human frailty and imperfection. 
Theories are often advanced with nothing to com- 
mend them but their novelty, and conclusions are 
promulgated upon which it is unsafe to build. A 
considerable part of all that has been published in 
the name of higher criticism is hay and wood and 
stubble, and will be some day viewed with the same 
amused wonder with which we now look at the 
dreary speculations of the schoolmen. Critical 
theories, proclaimed with blast of trumpets and 
received with a shout, fall dead one after the other, 
and no matter what the present dominant theory 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 143 

is, the chances are that the feet of those who buried 
its predecessor are at the door ready to carry it out. 
Every thinking man must of necessity have a theory 
of the Bible, but it is important to remember that 
the Bible is more than any theory of the Bible. 
Young preachers filled with the latest speculations 
of the schools sometimes err in making their no- 
tions of the Scriptures more conspicuous than the 
Scriptures themselves. It is possible so to overlay 
the Bible with hypotheses and guesses as to prevent 
it doing its God-appointed work. No matter what 
your view may be of the composition and structure 
of the Scriptures, read them to your people. The 
last word of Biblical criticism has not been written. 
Many of the conclusions of the latest scholarship 
are only tentative and will be revised several times 
before your heads are gray. Read the Bible to your 
people without comment. Do not munie its music 
in the folds of your conjectures. Let its organ tones 
sound out, finding those who have ears to hear. Do 
not dim its light by your assumptions. Let it shine 
undarkened by interpretations. Do not quench 
its fire by your suppositions. Let it radiate its heat, 
and who knows how many hearts may be melted. 
Do not dull the edge of it by wrapping round it your 
conceits or guesses. Let it cut. It may prove to 



144 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

be even in the twentieth century " living and active 
and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing 
even to the dividing of the soul and spirit." 

No matter what you may think of the Pentateuchal 
sources, or of the number of Isaiahs, or the author- 
ship of the Psalms, or the extent of interpolated 
passages in the Gospels, the fact remains that the 
Bible is the book of books, and is able to make wise 
unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 
It is a world power, and the wise preacher will make 
generous use of it. He can build up his congregation 
by reading the Scriptures. Men who care little for 
his sermons will come to church if he knows how to 
read the prophets and apostles. His congregation 
will grow constantly in sensitiveness to religious ap- 
peal and in capacity for assimilating religious truth, 
if only it is steeped in the Scriptures. The more 
of the Bible men hear, the more will they want to 
hear. It is not because people know the Bible that 
they take scant interest in sermons. It is because 
they are ignorant of it. It is the children who have 
been fed the Scriptures from infancy who become 
the men and the women who listen with keenest 
appreciation to what the preacher has to say. 
The lad in Lystra who was most attracted by the 
travelling preacher, Paul, was the boy who knew 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS I45 

from a babe the sacred writings. If you desire a 
congregation hungry for your sermons, then read 
them the Bible. It contains the food which builds 
up the faculties to which a preacher speaks, and 
upon which he must rely. It is a book of voices, 
thrilling, piercing, mysterious voices whose accents 
stir powers in the human soul which are deep and 
sleeping and haunt the spirit with a bewitching 
music which will not let it go. It finds men both at 
their highest and their deepest. It sweeps through 
a wider gamut of thought and feeling than any one 
man is master of. It offers a more myriad-sided 
wisdom than any one soul possesses. It will reach 
men whom you in your sermons will never reach. 
It creates moods and chastens tempers as no 
other book in all the world. It produces a climate 
in which sermons come to luxuriant growth. For 
your own sake you need to read the Scriptures to 
your people with mind and heart and soul. It 
is when a man is filled with the spirit which burned 
in the hearts of the Bible saints and heroes that he 
feels most like preaching. It is then that he cries, 
"Woe is me if I do not preach." The Bible builds 
up both the laity and the clergy. Its words are 
spirit, they are life. They stir and kindle, they 
illumine and move. They have hands and feet, they 



146 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

work miracles. Men who drink them in become 
able to stop the mouths of lions and to quench the 
violence of fire. 

Prepare yourselves, therefore, to become Bible 
readers. Train yourself with that end in view. 
Discipline your voice until it becomes flexible and 
capacious, capable of expressing the emotions which 
the prophets felt, and the visions which the apostles 
saw. Practise Bible reading every week. Per- 
fection comes only by practice. The art of reading 
is a fine and difficult art, and no man learns in his 
sleep how, by modulation and by accent, by into- 
nation and by emphasis, to interpret the sentences 
which have been written for men's comfort. There 
is no excuse for shabby Bible reading. Not every 
man can be a brilliant preacher, but every man can 
be a good Bible reader. If he cannot himself create 
great sermons, he can read with grace and force the 
sermons which holy men of old delivered. Let us 
hope the time will come when no man will be gradu- 
ated from a theological seminary without having 
passed an examination in Bible reading, and when 
no man can be ordained to the Christian ministry 
who is not a good Bible reader. Negligence at this 
point is not only mental dullness but a moral 
delinquency. 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 147 

Resolve, then, to read the Bible generously to 
your people. Read the Old Testament as well as 
the New, the Epistles no less than the Gospels. Do 
not allow your people to infer that there are only a 
few narrow shreds and isolated patches worthy of 
a modern man's attention. Keep alive in men's 
hearts reverence for the Bible as a whole. Read its 
history and poetry, its biography and letters, its 
sermons and its prophecies. Read them in all the 
meetings of the church, in the meetings of public 
worship and in the prayer meeting, in the Bible 
school and in the missionary societies. Drench 
your church in the spirit of the Bible. Read it like 
a man of prayer. Read it like a prophet of Jehovah. 
Read it like a lover subdued by its message. New 
light will break forth from it every time you take its 
words upon your lips. God has spoken often through 
the book, and often will He speak again. Great 
preachers live on the Bible. Their supreme delight 
is giving the Bible to the people. Essayists, lec- 
turers, and clerical adventurers of divers types may 
make a stir for a season in the Christian pulpit, but the 
ages are not deceived. The church, on looking back- 
ward and counting up her pulpit princes, admits no 
one to the shining company of the immortals save 
those alone who have been mighty in the Scriptures. 



148 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

The work begun and developed by Bible reading, 
praise, and prayer is carried on and perfected by the 
sermon. The church of Jesus must be reverent, 
grateful, sympathetic, hospitable, jubilant, and lov- 
ing; and to make it this is the preacher's occupation. 
In the growing of moods, we do well to remember 
that nothing in God's universe takes place by chance. 
The preacher, like the farmer, works under a God 
of law, and the same obedience and industry which 
bring forth corn and potatoes will no less certainly 
secure the fruits of the Spirit. The flowers of para- 
dise like all other flowers are within the reach of all 
who are willing to expend the necessary labor. 
Heavenly plants, as well as plants of the earth, must 
be watered and cultivated. If a church is not 
beautiful and fragrant it is largely because the 
spiritual gardeners have been ignorant or lazy. It is 
for them to create the climatic conditions under 
which celestial seeds come to blossom and fruitage. 
There is no reason why the word of the preacher 
should year after year return to him void. 

Moods, then, are the preacher's first concern. 
His earliest work is to bring his people into a Chris- 
tian frame of mind. What men are willing to believe 
depends largely upon their mental mood. A 
preacher forgets this at his peril. Let him beware 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 149 

how he tries to introduce new interpretations and 
doctrines into a church whose mind is inhospitable. 
Some churches are in a shell. The new preacher 
sees this at a glance. He proceeds forthwith to drive 
into it a series of logical and pointed discourses on 
the particular doctrine upon which the church in his 
judgment needs enlightenment, whereas he ought 
first by the patient exposition of old truths in which 
every one believes create an atmosphere under whose 
genial influence the shell will open of itself. Men 
cannot be driven into believing things by argu- 
mentative sermons, but are made hospitable to new 
truths by the gradual transforming of their minds. 
It is not by mental force or brilliant argument that 
inadequate or erroneous conceptions are gotten rid 
of, but by elevating the whole plane of thinking 
and raising the temperature of the life of the heart. 
A church will believe what it ought to believe only 
when it is in the right mood. 

If the preacher desires to create a sympathetic 
and social temper, he will pay attention to his 
vocabulary. He will eschew so far as possible 
all technical and abstract words. Words which 
are cold and unfamiliar will be promptly banished 
and only those retained which the heart knows. 
Words used by specialists and words born in dis- 



150 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

tant lands will give place to the native words which 
are used in street and school and home. To come 
close to men the preacher must speak to them 
in the language in which they were born. It is the 
words of the mother tongue which find the blood. 
There is a necromancy in language and a preacher 
ought to understand and use its magic. Words 
in themselves are powers and have strange potencies 
to awaken desires, quicken impulses, create ambi- 
tions, give shape to ideals and direction to feelings, 
and kindle all those subtle flames which burn upon 
the soul's central altars. Some preachers use a 
vocabulary cold enough to form icicles. Their ser- 
mons sound like pages torn from an almanac, or a 
text-book, or a volume of statistics. They are not 
acquainted with the words which poets use nor 
can they speak the syllables which start and feed a 
fire. Words have moods as people do, and the 
preacher must be master of the words which carry in 
their hearts the dispositions which he desires to com- 
municate to his people. There are reverent, kneel- 
ing words, warm, tender and affectionate words, 
open-handed, open-hearted, hospitable words, laugh- 
ing, shouting, hallelujah words — words which are so 
rich in human experience, so saturated with laughter 
and tears, that if the preacher breaks them upon his 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 151 

congregation they fill with perfume, like precious 
alabaster boxes, all the place where he is preaching. 
Even more careful will he be of his themes. He 
will never remain away long from the great subjects. 
If men are to feel deeply and enlarge the organs of emo- 
tion, they must have something great to think about. 
Exhortations to enthusiasm and other emotions are 
sounding brass. Feelings come, not by the cudgel- 
ing of the will, but by the contemplation of facts and 
truths which pierce and expand the heart. Mighty 
moods are created only by majestic visions. Let the 
preacher, therefore, avoid thin issues, petty questions, 
trifling topics, and devote himself to the sovereign 
features of the revelation of God in Christ, and to 
those imperial interests which concern the universal 
heart. He will not make his sermons chambers of 
horrors, dealing constantly with the world's outrages 
and scandals, but he will on the Lord's day unveil 
the face of the One who is the fairest of ten thou- 
sand, the One altogether lovely. The mind that was 
in Jesus is the mind which the preacher is to build up 
in his people, and it is by looking again and again at 
the Man of men that the soul passes from glory to 
glory, being changed into his own image. To pro- 
duce the Christian mood there is no method equal 
to that of Paul, preaching Jesus and him crucified. 



152 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

But fully as important as his theme is the spirit 
and manner of the preacher. Moods are conta- 
gious. " Like priest, like people." There are narrow 
and crabbed congregations made such by a big- 
oted and surly curmudgeon in the pulpit. Some 
churches are hard and intolerant because of the pig- 
headed dogmatism of the preacher. Parishes are 
sometimes cynical and misanthropic because a 
clerical Thesites stands at the centre. There are 
congregations which are irreverent and simpering 
because of the jaunty worldling who officiates in holy 
things. Many a church is glum and discouraged 
because its pastor is lachrymose and drooping. As 
soon as a preacher finds himself pitching all his 
sermons in a minor key, he ought to resign or be 
granted a vacation. Preachers are ordained to build 
up in men the mood of faith, not of doubt; of hope, 
not of despair; of love, not of denunciation and 
fault-finding. Joy is one of the surest evidences of 
the presence of the Lord. A dejected or despondent 
church has lost the note which made the apostolic 
church invincible. The Christian pulpit lies in 
the gleam of a triumphant spirit. In all true Chris- 
tian preaching the trumpets are sounding all the 
way. The cross is evermore in sight, and so also is 
he who said and says : "Be of good cheer, I have 



BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 53 

overcome." The preacher must, by word and life, 
teach his church the art of always rejoicing. We 
live in a world of gigantic wrongs and heart-rending 
tragedies. The fires of hell are burning at our 
doors. Strong men will sometimes flame and 
thunder, and weak men will often sob and whimper; 
but Christian preachers are sent from God, not sim- 
ply to hurl thunderbolts at the world's demons and 
dragons, or to paint with lurid rhetoric society's 
cancers and abominations, but rather to inspire the 
heart with sentiments which will by and by put an 
end to ancient slaveries and create a soul under the 
ribs of death. 

It is not for every preacher to be pastor of a large 
church, but every preacher may covet the joy of 
shepherding a church beautiful. If men judge a 
church by the size of its membership, God judges it, 
we may be certain, by the height of its ideals, the 
range of its sympathies, the reach of its aspirations, 
the depth of its convictions, the fineness of its temper, 
the graciousness of its disposition, and the wealth of 
those graces which he saw in his well-beloved Son. 
When you find you cannot increase the size of your 
church, go to work with fresh energy to increase the 
dimensions of its soul. Quality of life, and not 
quantity, is what counts most in working out God's 



154 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 

plans. The church of Christ must first of all be beau- 
tiful. She represents the wooing, winsome Jesus, 
and she conquers only by her grace. Her mind must 
be sympathetic, her spirit gracious, her touch gentle, 
her face radiant, and her temper sweet. She must 
be disciplined to walk in the ways the Master loves. 
She must have his simplicity and tranquillity, his 
poise and indescribable charm. She subdues, not 
by driving, but by the irresistible fascination of her 
loveliness. It is by transforming, with God's help, 
the mood of the church that we preachers are to 
change the face of the world. The church is a me- 
dium of revelation, and it is only when it incarnates 
the disposition of Jesus, that the nations will behold 
in it the manifold wisdom of God. 



LECTURE V 
BUILDING THRONES 



BUILDING THRONES 

In the world's speech, " throne" is the symbol of 
power. By the building of thrones is meant in this 
lecture the generation and development of moral 
forces, the creation and organizing of spiritual po- 
tencies. The New Testament pictures the Founder 
of the Christian religion as a man of might. He is a 
miracle worker and a fountain of new forces. Streams 
of energy flow from him. Nature and humanity 
are alike responsive to his touch. People stand 
astounded at the things which he does. Wherever 
he goes he stirs the crowds mightily, and men con- 
fess that they have never seen it after that fashion. 
He places himself upon a throne, and the New Testa- 
ment writers leave him there. All authority is 
given unto him. He is King of kings and Lord of 
lords. 

"Ye shall sit on thrones," so he said to the men 
who were nearest to him, and when he sent them out 
he gave them power to tread upon things that hurt. 
His parting promise to them was a fresh baptism of 
strength. "Ye shall receive power" — so he said 

157 



158 BUILDING THRONES 

as the cloud covered him. What he said to the 
Twelve he says to all. The climax of his promises 
to the churches is, "He that overcome th will I give 
to him to sit down with me in my throne." 

The preacher, then, is a servant of a King, and his 
message is a form of power. Such was the concep- 
tion of the first great preacher. " I am not ashamed 
of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto sal- 
vation to every one who believes." The man 
who carries the message thus becomes a man of 
power. An impotent preacher is no preacher at all. 
Preachers are to be ranked by what they accom- 
plish. They are not to be measured by their learn- 
ing, or language, or elocution, or reputation, but by 
what they achieve. Only he is a great preacher who 
brings great things to pass. Sermons are nothing un- 
less they are social forces. If they do not work, they 
are clanging cymbals. It is expected of a minister 
that he shall be influential, that an energy shall flow 
from him into the lives of men. 

Since every man has immediate access to the heart 
of God, and is privileged to share in the divine grace, 
every regenerated soul becomes a centre from which 
celestial energy is radiated. On the day of Pente- 
cost there was a light on every forehead, a song in 
every heart. All were participators in the overmas- 



BUILDING THRONES 1 59 

tering power from heaven. Under the new dispensa- 
tion every believer sits on a throne, and influences 
go out from him over a kingdom whose boundaries 
are known only to the Lord. The faith was de- 
livered to the saints, and so also were the keys. The 
power of binding and loosing does not belong to 
clergymen alone, but is in the hands of the society 
of believers. Ideally, every Christian is a prophet, 
a priest, and a king. In Christ, God calls us one and 
all to sit enthroned. 

The church, then, is a form of power, a huge com- 
plex of blended energies, created for the purpose of 
working upon the world's thought and conduct. The 
church universal is the one supreme world power for. 
moulding ideals and re-creating dispositions. To 
make it increasingly regnant in society's business 
and bosom is the work to which preachers are called. 

All this is written large across the pages of the 
Scriptures. Abraham believed that through him 
all the families of the earth were to be blessed. 
Isaiah saw a light going forth from Jerusalem illu- 
mining the isles of the sea. The church does not 
exist for itself. It is a steward of the divine bounty. 
Its treasures are all held in trust. It is elected, not 
for the enjoyment of favors, but for service. It lives 
and labors for humanity. "For their sakes, I 



l6o BUILDING THRONES 

sanctify myself," these are the Master's words, and 
the church, when true to him, makes them her 
own. The road to greatness lies through service, 
and the true church is the church which says, "I am 
among you as one who serves." When Jesus sent 
out the Twelve, they were given power to heal as 
well as to preach, to cast out demons as well as to 
teach. His favorite figures all carry in them this 
idea of going forth with power to serve. "Ye are 
the light of the world." Light does not exist for 
itself, but for the eyes of those who sit in darkness. 
"Ye are the salt of the earth." Salt does not exist 
for itself, but for that which it saves from putrefac- 
tion. "Ye are the leaven." Leaven does not exist 
for itself, but for the bread which it renders palatable 
and nutritious. Light and salt and yeast are en- 
thusiastic and indefatigable workers. "Go!" was 
Jesus' constant exhortation, and round his youthful 
church he wrapped on the day of his ascension this 
great commission — "Go, disciple the nations!" 
The church, as Jesus saw it, was not a Noah's ark 
in which a favored few were to be carried through 
the flood, but rather a brotherhood of workers, 
pledged to God and to one another for the cleansing 
of society and the getting of Heaven's will done upon 
this earth. If the church hides its life under an 



BUILDING THRONES l6l 

ecclesiastical bushel, the members of the world's 
household will remain in darkness. If the church is 
not useful, it is like salt which has lost its savor, 
good for nothing but to be cast under foot of men. 
If it does not make itself felt in the community, it 
fails to represent the living, mighty God. If it 
does not lay down its life daily for the good of men, 
it does not follow in the footsteps of its Lord. It is 
true to its Founder only when it is a society of 
saviours, an instrument of social redemption, an angel 
troubling the waters of the pool in which humanity 
is to be healed. Its work lies in Jerusalem, and also 
in Judea, and also in Samaria, and also in the na- 
tions which he in the darkness on the outer edge of 
the world. It is a planetary power. 

The New Testament church is a working, self-sacri- 
ficing, conquering society of brothers; and this is the 
church which the world to-day is calling for with 
a passionate insistence which cannot go unheeded. 
The ages in which the church stood dreamy and idle, 
waiting for a new heaven and a new earth, have gone, 
never to return. The idea of the church as a city of 
refuge, into which sinners may flee for the saving 
of their souls, is no longer tenable among thoughtful 
men. "Come out from among them, and be ye 
separate," can no longer receive the monastic inter- 



1 62 BUILDING THRONES 

pretation. Individual redemption is the starting- 
point, but world redemption is the goal. Religion is 
more than a personal possession of security and peace 
and joy, it is a service, a sacrifice, a gift to others. 
Men are praying "Thy kingdom come" with a 
new passion. Religion is now seen to concern this 
world no less than the world which is to come. The 
good things which have been promised are not all to 
be waited for until we put on immortality. We have 
a right to hope, not simply for the rescue of a few of 
the ship's passengers, but for the saving of the entire 
ship. The kingdoms of this world are not hopelessly 
in the hands of the devil, but will become, when 
Christian consecration and sacrifice have done their 
work, the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ. 
This transfer of emphasis from the other world to 
this is one of the mightiest of all the changes which 
have been wrought in Christian thinking within the 
last hundred years, and it brings to the front for 
fresh discussion the question, What is the mission of 
the church ? Men are asking to-day with irritating 
intensity and repetitiousness : "What is the church 
doing ? What mighty works does she perform to- 
day? What evil spirits is she casting out? What 
diseases of society is she healing? Where are the 
serpents and the scorpions which she is crushing?" 



BUILDING THRONES 163 

The old-time stress on creeds has been shifted. The 
first question now is not, What do you believe? 
but, What are you doing to make a better world ? 
The old inquiries as to emotional experiences have 
been superseded by queries in regard to good works. 
The one parable of Jesus with which the twentieth 
century is most familiar is the parable of the good 
Samaritan, and the words of the New Testament 
which can be seen the farthest, and which are read 
by the largest number of living men, are the closing 
words of that same parable — "Go and do thou 
likewise." It is a humanitarian age. The only 
religion which appeals to thousands is a religion 
which exalts and glorifies service. You may quarrel 
with this mood if you will, and say that it is running 
to extremes, but you are not likely to suppress it. 
A new spirit is abroad and its voice is heard through- 
out the world. Men are laying an emphasis on so- 
cial problems and the social applications of religion, 
which is quite unique in Christian history. No doubt 
this is the Lord's doing, one of the signs of the times 
which only blind men will fail to note and ponder. 
It is always well to meet men where they are, for it is 
only as we are willing to meet them there, that we 
have any chance of leading them where we think 
they ought to be. If you take scant interest in the 



164 BUILDING THRONES 

practical aspects of religion, and show ignorance of 
the social and industrial movements of your time, you 
will alienate many of the noblest spirits in your con- 
gregation. If you do not give your people tasks to 
do, and lead them into spacious fields of practical 
endeavor, you must not be surprised when they 
wander off by twos and threes, as they surely will, 
and attach themselves to congregations which are 
doers of the word and not hearers only. We live in 
the midst of a restless, energetic people, a people not 
over fond of definitions and abstract thought, and the 
only way to escape disaster is to cut generous chan- 
nels through which this tumultuous energy can flow. 
The generation of moral power and the application 
of it, this is the fascinating problem to which the 
preacher will again and again return. 

It is the complaint of many ministers that their 
people will not work, but the fault does not always 
lie with the people. It may be that the minister 
does not know how so to strike the rock of the human 
heart as to cause the streams of force to flow without 
which effective action is impossible. The hearts of 
men must be cultivated with all diligence, for out of 
the heart are the moving forces of the world. Con- 
science is a power, and so are sympathy, affection, 
good-will, enthusiasm, loyalty, devotion, aspiration; 



BUILDING THRONES 1 65 

and the preacher must preach in such a way as to in- 
crease the stock of each and all of these. He ought 
to ask himself unceasingly : " How can I give a new 
edge to conscience and a new height to aspiration ? 
How can I arouse the social sympathies and senti- 
ments? How can I create the moral enthusiasm 
and spiritual passion without which society must 
degenerate and shrivel? How can I increase the 
capacity of the church dynamo for creating the 
moral forces by which all the wheels of philanthropy 
and social betterment throughout the town shall 
be kept turning ? How can I replenish the spiritual 
forces of humanity, that the material development 
of the community may not outstrip its moral 
growth?" The man who faces questions such as 
these will not preach narrow or stupefying sermons. 
He will cultivate in his people the habit of looking 
outward. He will cut windows in his discourses 
opening out upon the public square. He will keep 
the church doors ajar, and preach a gospel which car- 
ries the world's horizon in its eye. It is when the 
preacher has no vision that the people become slug- 
gish and perish. 

There are preachers who do not know how to use 
their people even after they are aroused. They do 
everything themselves. Soon or late they become 



1 66 BUILDING THRONES 

jaded and discouraged and begin to say damnatory 
things about the selfishness and laziness of church 
members. In many cases the discouragement is 
due to the preacher's own ignorance and folly. 
He made himself the one and only parish dynamo. 
He did not roll the burden of parochial work upon 
the shoulders which God had provided to receive it. 
He allowed his people to think of themselves as a 
select society to be ministered unto, when it was his 
business to train them to minister and to give their 
lives a ransom for others. A minister should use 
his people. He need not carry them. They are 
able to walk. The farther they walk the better. 
He need not do their work. The more they work 
the more do they grow in grace and in the knowl- 
edge of Jesus Christ their Saviour. To do their 
work for them is to blast their spiritual develop- 
ment and lay upon their substitute a burden too 
great for flesh and blood to bear. Even Moses 
tottered under so heavy a load. " I am not able to 
bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy 
for me. Kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, and let 
me not see my wretchedness." And the reply of the 
Almighty was, " Gather unto me seventy men of the 
elders of Israel and I will take of the spirit which 
is upon thee and will put it upon them ; and they 



BUILDING THRONES 1 67 

shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that 
thou bear it not thyself alone." This was the 
method of Jesus. He did not attempt to redeem 
Palestine unassisted. He rolled the great enter- 
prise upon twelve men, and then upon seventy, 
and then upon one hundred and twenty. The 
apostles would not allow themselves to be crushed 
by getting under all the work which the church found 
to do. They called out the resources of men whom 
God had raised up for their assistance. If it be 
true that the spirit of God has come upon all classes, 
the old and the young, the women as well as the men, 
why should the minister not make use of his entire 
church membership in getting done the things which 
ought to be accomplished ? 

There are ministers who do not know how to 
organize their people, and then censure them for 
working ineffectively. To build the principle of co- 
operation into the life of the church is to augment 
its power enormously. Capitalists have learned 
how to organize money, and it is by consolidated gold 
that they are working their miracles. Industry has 
mastered the art of combination, and a new era has 
dawned for labor. It is for ministers to organize 
character, to marshal conscience, to coordinate and 
link together moral forces in such ways as to hasten 



1 68 BUILDING THRONES 

the coming of the golden age. If one can chase a 
thousand, and two can put ten thousand to flight, 
what may be expected when a hundred or five hun- 
dred Christians are amalgamated into a compact 
body, inflamed by the spirit of the Lord, and led by a 
man who knows how to blow from a bugle a blast 
which is not uncertain ? 

It is only by patient drilling that armies are 
prepared for battle, and it is only by long-continued 
training that Christians are fitted for effective 
service. Telling church members that they ought to 
work is not enough. Some preachers have a gift for 
exhortation, and after that there is no more which 
they can do. They exalt the glory of performance 
and urge the necessity of laboring for God, but they 
never point out the specific tasks which it is possible 
for their people to work at. Or if they name the 
task which is to be attempted, they do not designate 
the successive steps which must be taken in order to 
reach the goal. Laymen need leadership in the realm 
of Christian effort, no less than in the region of Chris- 
tian thought. It is as easy to overestimate men's 
knowledge of how to work as it is to underestimate 
their willingness and ability to work if only properly 
instructed. A large proportion of church members 
are novices in Christian service, and must be led 



BUILDING THRONES 1 69 

on from point to point, like children in a kindergar- 
ten, with infinite patience and particularity of 
instruction. Work must be broken into bits, and 
the bits distributed to groups and individuals, 
with detailed suggestions as to the best way of doing 
it. Working for the redemption of a community 
is a fine art, and all of us are bunglers at first, gaining 
proficiency only after many pains and botchings. 
The gift of encouragement is more valuable than the 
gift of exhortation, and the pastor who encourages 
his people to take hold of certain definite tasks, 
and heartens them step by step as they proceed 
along the way, will bring to pass achievements for- 
ever beyond the vehement exhorter who is everlast- 
ingly expatiating on the heavenly loveliness of 
service, but who never takes the trouble to tell his 
people in unambiguous English what they ought 
to do. 

It must be confessed that not a few ministers 
fail because of their inherent and ineradicable 
selfishness. They work for the building of their own 
throne, and give little thought to the thrones of their 
brethren. Their ambition, perhaps, is to make their 
pulpit a throne, and they count themselves the only 
preacher, forgetting that there ought to be in every 
parish as many heralds of the cross as there are 



170 BUILDING THRONES 

Christians, and that it is only when the entire church 
is at work preaching that the whole parish can be 
reached. It may be their ambition to be model 
pastors, and they devote themselves to the building 
of lofty pastoral thrones, forgetting that there ought 
to be in their churches as many pastors as there are 
members. To every Christian is given the responsi- 
bility of shepherding souls. The pastor is a shep- 
herd of shepherds. Because the minister alone 
officiates at the Lord's Table, he may lose sight of the 
fact that every Christian is a priest, and is anointed 
to be a mediator between God and men. It is easy 
for a minister to be selfish without realizing how 
selfish he is. He may insist on doing everything 
himself, because he is unwilling to submit to the 
drudgery of training others. He may prefer to do 
all the speaking at every meeting because he has not 
the patience to develop in others the gift of speech. 
A man of this type gradually gathers up everything 
into his own hands, his people degenerating into 
auditors and spectators.. But his sin finds him out. 
By failing to develop the resources of his people, 
he curtails the sphere of his influence. The man 
who builds masterful workers multiplies himself 
many fold. A preacher is never so surely adding 
cubits to the height of his own throne as when he is 



BUILDING THRONES I7I 

building thrones for his brethren. It is by surround- 
ing his throne by other thrones that he comes into 
the fulness of the power which has been promised. 

How, then, shall the minister go to work in the 
construction of thrones? He must first of all be- 
lieve in human nature. He must have faith in the 
capacity of the average man. God alone knows the 
soul and the extent of its undiscovered resources. 
The preacher who builds his hopes on brilliant 
people only is doomed to disappointment. The 
five-talented men and women are few in number, 
and even when they use their talents, they are in- 
adequate to the situation. The preacher who would 
make his church a power must begin by trusting 
common people. The man with two talents must 
be cultivated, and the man with one talent must 
not be neglected. Stupid people are bright people 
not yet awakened. Mediocre folk are geniuses 
whose hour has not yet come. You never know 
how many talents a man has from what he says or 
from what he is able to exhibit. One of the constant 
surprises in this world is the way in which the people 
from whom we had expected little surpass those 
from whom we had expected much. The pigmies 
are always springing into giants, the dull pupils are 
constantly passing the best examinations, the 



172 BUILDING THRONES 

sluggards are continually shaking off their lethargy 
and performing the labors of Hercules. It is the old 
story, the tortoise arrives before the hare. The 
race is not always to the man you call swift, and the 
battle is not always to the man you think strong. 
God seems to take delight in surprising us by choos- 
ing "the foolish things of the world to shame them 
that are wise, and the weak things of the world to 
put to shame the things that are strong, and the 
base things of the world, and the things that are 
despised, yea and the things that are not to bring 
to nought the things that are." To unlock the vital 
energies of immortal souls and set them working in 
our human world is a work fit for a god. Many a 
preacher fails because he underestimates the possi- 
bilities of his people. All of them are created in 
God's image. All of them are heirs of immortality. 
All of them are bought by the blood of Jesus. They 
are now sons of God and it does not yet appear what 
they shall be even this side of death. We only 
know that they can pass from glory to glory, 
gaining more and more of the power of the Lord. 
Some ministers can use old people, but not young 
people. They are suspicious of their young people, 
and quarrel with them. Others can cooperate with 
men, but not with women. They disparage feminine 



BUILDING THRONES 1 73 

endowments and lack ability to make use of them. 
Others can utilize the educated, but not the un- 
lettered, the rich but not the poor, or vice versa; but 
the successful preacher draws boldly on the resources 
of all. He puts to use the vigor and hopefulness 
of the young, the retrospection and wisdom of the 
old, the virility of men and the tenderness of 
women, the vivacity of youth and the innocence 
of children, for out of the mouths of babes and 
sucklings God still perfects praise. He renders 
useful the rich and the cultured, and also the 
servants and all who hew wood and draw water, 
remembering that the spirit of God has come upon 
all flesh, and that every human being is a shekinah. 
Show your faith in human nature by expecting the 
largest things of your people. Give them abundant 
and taxing work to do. A church that is not kept 
busy is certain to become fastidious, and a church 
given to criticising is a church that encumbers the 
ground. There is nothing so deadly to the spirit 
of faultfinding, and the entire brood of demons to 
which faultfinding gives birth, as work. Work 
develops what is best in us, and kills what is worst. 
You can cast out demons by training men to labor. 
Work is a great socializer. It breaks down barriers. 
Important work must be done by cooperative 



174 BUILDING THRONES 

effort. Cooperation increases strength and also 
good feeling. Girls who sew together for the poor 
sew their hearts together. Women who plan and 
pray for missionaries forget their social differences. 
Large tasks call for the strength of the group, and 
with the coming of Christians into groups there 
descends the spirit of power. Association in labor 
is a means of grace. Morbid moods disappear and 
bad heart habits are sloughed off in an atmosphere 
made warm by social intercourse. Church work 
accomplishes many things, and not the least is the 
bringing of Christians together. By coming to- 
gether they get nearer to God. 

Trust the people, give them work, and then be 
patient with them. The important thing is not that 
things be done superbly, but that they be done in- 
creasingly well. The head of a church must not be 
fussy and must have the love which suffers long and 
still is kind. Many of those who enter the vine- 
yard will slink out of it before noon, discouraged. 
Others will stand idle in the vineyard, preferring the 
shade of the vineyard to the sun of the market-place. 
Your first impulse will be to castigate. But castiga- 
tion is not a preacher's occupation. He is an en- 
courager. People need nothing so much as courage. 
A scolding pastor lessens the courage even of the 






BUILDING THRONES 1 75 

brave. The faint-hearted are legion, and to scorn 
them is a sin. The blunderers must not be whipped. 
Mistakes are numerous and exasperating, but after 
all a minister with eyes can always see a lot of solid 
strength and splendid promise. To recognize a 
success is better than to call attention to a failure. 
To blow a trumpet over a victory is better tactics 
than to play a flute over a defeat. Fix your eyes 
on the best things. It is an encouragement to 
preachers that Christ had such a fondness for a 
grain of mustard seed. What wonderful eyes he had 
for seeing the possibilities wrapped up in diminutive 
bundles. A preacher needs the eyes of Jesus, for 
oftentimes the encouraging symptoms in the parish 
are no larger than mustard seeds. He also needs the 
heart of Jesus. A bruised reed our Lord would not 
break. A smoking wick he would not extinguish. 
There come days when to the preacher's eyes there 
are no reeds in sight except bruised reeds, and no 
wicks except those that are smoking. The church 
seems filled with smoke, and the preacher is at the 
point of choking. But a builder, working under a 
permit granted by Heaven upon a structure which is 
to outlast the stars, ought not to become discour- 
aged. He ought to count the cost before he begins. 
Erecting thrones requires the qualities which a 



176 BUILDING THRONES 

builder needs in the building of a palace or a tower. 
It takes time and skill, fidelity and patience. It 
cannot be done in a month or a year. It cannot be 
accomplished without thought. It requires a sweat 
of blood. It is impossible without something of the 
calm-eyed perseverance and the persistent courage 
and the sober joy which Jesus had in the building of 
the thrones for his apostles. The working force of the 
church can be indefinitely increased by a minister 
who has mastered the secrets of the art of building. 
Energies can be coordinated, influences can be 
mobilized, power can be built, if only the laws of God 
are known and followed. 

Keep your church, then, at the centre of the world. 
Let the concentric circle, marking off the different 
zones, lie always luminous in your eyes : Jerusalem, 
your town, Judea, your country, Samaria, those prov- 
inces of your nation's life least permeated with spirit- 
ual forces, and finally the great non-christian world. 
This is your parish. The man who goes into his 
pulpit with these spheres of influence spread out be- 
fore him will not be likely to let his people go to sleep. 
There will come into his utterance the tone that 
Demosthenes knew, and men will say to one another, 
while he preaches, " Let us march against Philip! " 
It is for the preacher to pick up his congregation 






BUILDING THRONES 1 77 

and hurl it upon the world. The work of the preacher 
is with his church, the work of the church is with the 
world. Let the preacher concentrate himself upon 
his church, and his church will take hold of the town, 
the nation, and the nations. Ministers who rush 
hither and thither, eaten up with reformatory zeal, 
meddling with this and dabbling with that, do not 
begin to do so much for the advancement of the King- 
dom of God as do the men who stay at home and pour 
out into the souls of their own people the full meas- 
ure of their vitality and devotion. What spectacle 
is more lamentable than that of a minister struggling 
by vociferous speech on miscellaneous platforms to 
reform society, when his own church is scrawny and 
feeble; striving to set the world on fire when the little 
group of people whom God has intrusted to his keep- 
ing are chalky and limp. The church is the preach- 
er's throne, and the man who builds the most vigor- 
ous and puissant church wields the longest sceptre 
and wears the brightest crown. 

There are seven forms of power which a Christian 
church should be possessor of, or rather there are 
seven kingdoms in which its influence should be felt. 

The church is first of all a worshipping body. She 
sings praises and offers prayers unto God. She 
cultivates the devotional life and trains men to bow 



178 BUILDING THRONES 

their heads and hearts before the King of heaven. 
Public worship is a force to be carefully safeguarded 
and constantly strengthened. A church becomes a 
more effective working church when it has once 
learned to pray and sing. Bringing the heart to 
the throne of grace increases all its capacities 
and makes it capable of larger service. Public 
worship, moreover, is the testimony which the 
church bears to the community of its faith in the 
God who has revealed himself in Christ. For this 
reason, public worship should be full-toned and ju- 
bilant. Paul was always concerned about the im- 
pression which the church in her worship might 
make upon a visiting stranger. All preachers who 
have the Pauline wisdom plan and labor for the im- 
provement of their church worship. To give it a 
richer and more penetrating tone, to impart to it a 
higher beauty, to suffuse it with a more solemnizing 
and subduing spirit, is to increase the power of the 
church, not only over the lives of its members, but 
over the feeling of the community. Church attend- 
ance is not for Christians an elective. It is an es- 
sential part of the confession which a follower of 
Jesus makes to the world, a part of the work which 
the Master expects him to perform. The very exist- 
ence of Christianity depends on social worship, as 






BUILDING THRONES 1 79 

all the persecuting Roman emperors well understood. 
Could Christians not come together, the power of 
the Prince of Glory would be broken. "Forsake not 
the assembling of yourselves together," — so wrote 
a New Testament writer to men who ran the risk 
of losing their lives by frequenting the assemblies of 
the Nazarene. Worship does a mighty work. It 
melts the hearts of men together. They forget their 
differences of rank and culture and fortune when 
they repeat the creed or bow their heads in prayer. 
For the effacing of the lines which separate and the 
obliteration of the barriers which estrange, there is an 
immeasurable potency in common prayer. A con- 
gregation devoutly engaged in worship is doing some- 
thing for the community which cannot be done in any 
other way. It is a collective confession of Christ 
which outruns in influence the confession of any one 
individual, no matter how exalted. It has a power 
which the mightiest of sermons cannot exert. A 
careless or dwindled congregation retards the prog- 
ress of Christianity. A lifeless and formal worship 
shuts the heavens and makes it difficult to believe 
what Christ has said. Desultory church attend- 
ance is in Christians a sin. No Christian can absent 
himself needlessly from public worship without 
damaging the influence of the Christian society and 



180 BUILDING THRONES 

bringing loss to his own soul. Such persons are to 
be accounted disorderly. They have left their place 
in the ranks. They have violated the law of love. 
They are to be admonished. The preacher cannot 
afford to allow the worship in his church to become 
ragged or meagre. High standards should be held 
up. The Lord's army on the Lord's day should 
present a solid front. A disorderly or decimated 
army suggests demoralization and invites defeat. 
Public worship is a form of power. It is one of the 
lights in the seven-branched candlestick. 

The Christian society is a teaching body. The 
preacher is a teacher. The church is a school. The 
name for his followers which the Master loved was 
pupils. History knows him as the Great Teacher. 
The minister is the head teacher of his church, but 
he cannot do his work without assistants. What 
head teacher can ? He must educate a body of men 
and women to whom God has given the teaching 
gift and placed them upon thrones. At stated times 
the church meets for the study of the Scriptures 
by question and answer. Such a session of the 
church we call the Bible school. Whatever its name, 
it should not be forgotten that the school is not an 
outside institution, or an appendage to the church, 
but that it is the church itself engaged in the study 



BUILDING THRONES l8l 

of the Bible. The children are pupils and so also 
are the parents. The young are there and so also 
are heads which are hoary. The school includes 
professing Christians and all others who are willing 
to be taught. Here is an opportunity for the 
preacher to enlarge the scope of the church's in- 
fluence. By calling into the work of Bible teaching 
a company of Christians variously gifted, a wider 
and deeper impression is made than could be pro- 
duced by any one man. The choosing and training 
of these teachers is a task of stupendous importance. 
Through the personalities of the teachers, the gospel 
comes with a wide variety of richness and persuasive- 
ness, supplementing the instruction of the pulpit 
and reaching recesses in the community into which 
sermons could not travel. Boys and girls who might 
never be influenced by pulpit discourses, or even by 
the prayers of their parents, are often wooed and 
won by the fidelity and love of a teacher; and fathers 
and mothers who had lost all interest in organized 
Christianity frequently take their places in the pew 
again, because their children are in the Bible school. 
The preacher who raises up a consecrated Bible 
teacher opens a new channel for the inflow of God's 
grace. No Christians grow so rapidly as those who 
teach the Bible. It is the Bible teachers who become 



182 BUILDING THRONES 

the pillars of the church. In training teachers for 
their work the preacher is building thrones. Bible 
teaching is a second flame in the golden candlestick. 
The church is an evangelizing body. It exists 
to make converts. The Master called men to him 
only to send them out. He sent forth every one who 
took his yoke and learned of him. St. Luke tells 
us that all the members of the church in Jerusalem 
went forth preaching the word. Every Christian 
is a witness. The purpose of his witnessing is to 
bring others to the truth. A church which makes 
no converts is a church which Christ cannot own. 
Unless it adds to the number of those who are being 
saved, its own life is forfeited. It is sometimes 
asked if a pastor ought to be an evangelist ? If by 
evangelist is meant a man whose business it is to tell 
the good news in such a way as to bring men to 
Christ, then certainly every minister is called to do 
the work of an evangelist. His pulpit message 
should never lose the evangelistic note. His words 
should pierce men's hearts and bring them to re- 
pentance. His appeals ought to prick men's con- 
sciences and compel them to ask what they ought to 
do. If a minister preaches an entire year to uncon- 
verted people without a conversion, it is time that 
he withdraw from the ministry or ask God to give 



BUILDING THRONES 1 83 

him another heart. But the preacher is not the only 
evangelist. Laymen are baptized to announce the 
good tidings. It is their privilege and their duty to 
lead men into the kingdom of God. Church mem- 
bers must be trained to do evangelistic work. They 
are not likely to do it unless they are asked. They 
cannot do it well unless they are trained. It is for 
the preacher to gather round him a body of evange- 
lists and send them forth heralding the King. Lay- 
men can reach hearts which are closed to the preacher. 
They can speak with an accent which the preacher 
does not possess. The minister who trains a body 
of lay preachers extends immeasurably the range of 
the church's power. No one man has sufficient com- 
pass to his voice to reach all classes of people. There 
should be a varied appeal coming through the tongues 
of many consecrated believers. The church is an 
evangelist, and the evangel ought to break into 
music on a multitude of tongues. Passion for souls 
is a power. Evangelism is another candle in our 
beautiful candlestick. 

The church is a humanitarian body, — a servant of 
the human race. Jesus was a lover of human beings, 
irrespective of their condition or relations, and his 
church is bound to show good-will toward all. There 
are three classes which must be ever close to the 



184 BUILDING THRONES 

church's heart, because they are dear to the heart of 
Jesus, — the sick, the poor, and the forsaken. Noth- 
ing so enraged his soul as inhumanity. He began his 
public ministry by declaring his mission to be preach- 
ing the gospel to the poor, healing the broken-hearted, 
preaching deliverance to the captives, and recovering 
of sight to the blind, and setting at liberty them that 
are bruised. When John the Baptist sent inquiring 
whether he was indeed the Messiah, the reply of 
Jesus was, "Tell him I am doing deeds of mercy." 
He declared that the universe was built on this 
principle, and that the only men who would be 
counted blessed on the Judgment Day w T ould be 
those who had ministered to the sick and the poor 
and the forsaken. A preacher is not fit to preach 
who has no time to visit the sick, to help the poor, 
and to befriend the forlorn and neglected. If a 
preacher has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of 
his, no matter what he says in the pulpit. But this 
work cannot be done by the preacher alone. All 
Christians must share in the privilege, that they may 
become partakers of the heavenly rewards. The 
philanthropic work of the church should be organ- 
ized, and the largest possible number of church mem- 
bers should be enlisted in it. Most of them will 
not go into it of their own accord. They must be 



BUILDING THRONES 1 85 

called to it by the pastor and trained by him that 
they may do it well. It is for him to perform the 
miracle of multiplying the pairs of consecrated hands 
until the entire community feels the church's heal- 
ing touch. The church is a philanthropist. Social 
service is a power. Philanthropy is an additional 
flame-jet in the genial and hospitable candlestick. 

The church is a reforming body. Its mission is to 
turn the world upside down. It must prepare the 
way of the Lord and make his paths straight. 
It must torment the demons before their time. It 
must put its foot upon serpents and scorpions. It 
must be known as the implacable foe of things evil. 
The strongholds of iniquity must be attacked, and 
if possible pulled down. The ideal minister is a war- 
rior. He brings not peace but a sword. He will 
make bad men fear him, he will lay siege to the par- 
ticular evils of his own town. Those of antiquity 
may be referred to in a parenthesis, and so may 
those of a city a hundred miles away. The preacher 
must decide as to which enemies shall be first as- 
saulted, and then proceed to lay plans for accom- 
plishing their overthrow. But the preacher cannot 
fight alone. He is only a general, and no general 
fights without his army. The church is an army. 
This was Paul's conception. To Timothy he wrote, 



1 86 BUILDING THRONES 

"War a good warfare." This assumes that a 
preacher is a leader in a long campaign. Some 
preachers have a deal to say about the church mili- 
tant, but their churches do no fighting. A church 
which does not fight is a church whose pastor is not a 
general. An army never fights unless it is organized 
on a fighting basis, and is commanded by a man 
who is not averse to battle. The church is the force 
with which the preacher is to wage war. He must 
drill his soldiers in the art of fighting. Many a com- 
munity is cursed with abuses which might be thrown 
off, if only the churches would stir themselves. The 
churches would put on the armor, if only they had 
generals with a genius for command. Hundreds 
of young men might have been saved to the church, 
had only the preachers of the town picked out some 
one formidable fortress of the enemy, and organized 
the fighting ability of the youth for a vigorous and 
thrilling campaign. Young men want something to 
do. By the grace of God they are born fighters. If 
the church were only more militant, it might event- 
ually even in this world become triumphant. Spir- 
itual militarism is a form of power. Zeal for reform 
is a fifth lamp in the glorious candlestick. 

Can the church be a political force ? If by political 
force is meant a force influencing the temper and con- 



BUILDING THRONES 1 87 

duct of government, the answer is, Yes. Politics is 
one of the kingdoms of life, and the church is to be a 
power in all of the kingdoms. A preacher is a 
teacher of duty, and no class of duties can be counted 
trivial or unclean. For a preacher to slur or over- 
look political obligations is to be recreant to his 
trust. Men are to render to Caesar the things which 
are Caesar's. The officers of the state are ministers 
of God, and the work which they perform is a part 
of the plan of the Eternal. Church and state are in 
a sense separate, but spiritually they are united by 
indissoluble bonds. They act and react upon each 
other, and both are divine agencies ordained for the 
education of mankind. Each must help the other 
to be what it ought to be. The church must be held 
steadily at the center of the political world. The 
mind of Christ must be built into the state. 

This does not mean that the preacher shall cham- 
pion favorite candidates, or defend party platforms, 
or advocate partisan programmes. Party meetings 
are always out of place in a Christian church, and 
party sermons are always mischievous in a Christian 
pulpit. The minister who attempts to dictate to men 
how they shall vote, or who ventures even to advise 
a course of political action, is certain to suffer the 
retribution which his temerity has invited. Why 



188 BUILDING THRONES 

should a preacher be so short-sighted as to entangle 
himself with policies and parties, when he can do a 
work so much greater by rousing souls to a sense of 
civic obligation ? Why try to build a political party, 
when one can build a political power ? Why not 
be content to quicken civic conscience, exalt civic 
duties, keep social problems ever before men's eyes, 
infuse the spirit of Christ into political discussion, 
so frame the sermons that forces shall leap out of 
them generating devotion to civic ends ? The min- 
ister is a prophet of the Lord. His work is inspira- 
tional. He is a builder of sentiments, a creator of 
atmospheres. It is for him to strengthen senti- 
ments which will strangle politicians of the baser sort, 
and create an atmosphere in which many a boss and 
heeler will meet political death by asphyxiation. His 
work is to enlarge the social mind, the mind that con- 
cerns itself with communal affairs, and that labors to 
extend the laws of Christ over widening areas of life. 
Let him kindle a passion for social justice, intensify 
the hunger for civic righteousness, and make men 
daring in the face of depressing situations. Man is a 
political animal. His political nature must be stimu- 
lated and set free. A religion which leaves the po- 
litical interests and activities of men outside its 
jurisdiction is not a religion which will commend 



BUILDING THRONES 1 89 

itself to twentieth century men. The church must 
penetrate everything — even the world of the 
politicians. Passion for civic righteousness is an- 
other torch in the blazing candlestick. 

The church is a missionary body, it is sent on an 
errand to the whole creation. To a Christian a nar- 
row life is forbidden. The church is a body of mis- 
sionaries, organized for the purpose of sending their 
thoughts and prayers and assistance to human 
beings whom they have never seen. It is by the 
constant forwarding of messages of good-will and 
tokens of love that isolated congregations are bound 
together and chasms between races are bridged. The 
missionary force of a church can be amazingly multi- 
plied and extended. Everything depends on the 
minister. If the thoughts of his people do not reach 
round the world, and if their hearts are not suffi- 
ciently capacious to hold all nations and races, it is 
because his own vision is narrow and he is lacking in 
the skill to call out of the heart the forces which are 
deepest and mightiest. The preacher who informs 
himself in regard to missionary heroes and labors, 
who keeps before his people missionary principles, 
motives, problems, and victories, who organizes 
classes among the old and the young for the study of 
current movements in the missionary world, will in 



190 BUILDING THRONES 

time create a body of missionary sentiment which 
will make itself felt to the ends of the earth. The 
smallest and poorest congregation can be trained to 
carry on its heart, if not a continent, at least an is- 
land in a distant sea. Missionary enthusiasm is an- 
other luminous wick in the God-created candlestick. 
These are seven ways in which the church brings 
its life to bear upon the world. They are seven 
beams of light streaming out across human lives and 
homes, calling men to glorify their Father who is in 
heaven. They are seven thrones on each one of 
which Christ is seated, asserting his sovereignty over 
the affairs of men. The lights, if you look at them 
long enough, all blend into one light, and the thrones, 
if you consider them intently, mass themselves into 
one throne. The one light is the light that shines 
from God in the face of Jesus Christ, and the one 
throne is the seat of the King who wears many 
crowns. The preacher who, by giving his life to his 
church, makes it potent in all the kingdoms of hu- 
man thought and activity, has sat down with the 
King of kings in his throne. 



LECTURE VI 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

Thus far we have been dealing with the local con- 
gregation. Let us now consider the relation of the 
congregation to other congregations of the same com- 
munion, and the relation of these communions to 
other communions of the universal church. No 
congregation lives to itself or dies to itself. It is 
part of an organism, intimately knit up with other 
bodies, forming a living whole. A pastor is bound 
to take heed to all the flock in which the Holy 
Ghost has made him a bishop or overseer, and he 
must so conduct his work as to feed the great church 
of God of which his particular flock is a tiny frag- 
ment. Every preacher should do his work in the 
radiance of the vision of the church universal. Thus 
labored the first great preacher, Paul. He beheld 
the church always looming before him as an august 
and heavenly creation, at present stained and marred 
by human imperfection, but growing up into One 
able to make it a glorious church, not having spot or 
wrinkle or any such thing. Belief in the Holy Catho- 
lic church is one of the articles of the universal creed, 
o 193 



194 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

and the preacher who links his belief in the church 
with his belief in God the Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, works with an unfailing energy and keeps his 
heart serene in the midst of the storms. 

There is but one church known to the New Testa- 
ment. Christ never conceived of more than one. His 
church is a temple and it is built upon one foundation. 
It is a vine of which he is the stock, and believers are 
branches. Two vines are un thought of. It is a flock, 
and while there may be many folds, there can never be 
more than one flock under the care of one Shepherd. 
Dissensions and divisions were the one evil against 
which Jesus threw his heart in his high-priestly prayer, 
on the last night. That his church may be one 
is the deep and constant longing of his soul. 

All of St. Paul's metaphors are stamped with the 
idea of unity. He sees but one temple, one pillar, 
one body, one bride, one household, one medium 
of revelation. When enemies tilled the world with 
rumors that he and the apostles in Palestine were 
building on different foundations, he hastened to 
Jerusalem, and by a public conference with his 
brother workers endeavored to put an end to the 
damaging insinuations. He knew that a divided 
church could never win the world. He who builds 
on a separate foundation toils in vain. 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 95 

But by unity is not meant uniformity, either of 
government or of polity or of ritual. Uniformity is 
a surface thing, unity is deep and vital. ' ' That they 
may be one in us," which being interpreted means 
one in character, fellowship, spirit, love, so runs 
Jesus' great prayer, and it is the same sort of unity 
which Paul has in mind when he exhorts the Ephe- 
sians to give diligence "to keep the unity of the 
Spirit in the bond of peace." To Paul, as to all other 
New Testament writers, " There is one body, and 
one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
and Father of all." The unity is not formal, but 
spiritual. 

This spiritual unity manifests itself outwardly, 
but not perfectly. The treasure is in an earthen 
vessel, and the vessel bears the flaws of its origin. 
But the unity is none the less real. Imperfection 
mars, but does not destroy, genuine spiritual posses- 
sions, either in individuals or organizations. The 
unity of the church is a growing unity, and passes 
gradually from less to more. "Each separate build- 
ing, fitly framed together, is growing into a holy 
temple in the Lord." The unity will express itself 
in completer manifestations in the successive stages 
of the unfolding process, until all groups of Christians 
"attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowl- 



196 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

edge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto 
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 
If all Christians are only rooted and grounded in 
love, then all will grow up sometime, somehow, in all 
things into him which is the Head, even Christ. 

The real unity of the Christian church in the 
twentieth century is a fact which every preacher 
ought to see, and proclaim with joy. Many sour- 
eyed prophets have gone abroad, bewailing in lugu- 
brious tones the church's deplorable and diabolical 
divisions, and by their exaggerated representations 
have caused many even of the elect to forget sundry 
things which ought to be held steadily in mind. 
The church of Christ is not so divided as it looks. 
The confusion is neither so deep nor deadly as it has 
been painted. The seamless robe of Christ is not so 
badly torn as the disconsolate are asserting. In 
ritual and discipline and government the various 
bodies of the Lord's people differ, as they have a right 
to do, but in the things which are essential they are 
deeply and gloriously united. It is not by differences 
in conception of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, 
of character and duty and destiny, but chiefly by 
divergent views in regard to forms of ecclesiastical 
administration that the various Christian commun- 
ions are held apart. There is a surprising unity in all 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 97 

the branches of Christendom in the things which are 
fundamental. All Christians of whatever name unite 
in repeating the Prayer which the Lord taught, and 
in their extempore petitions they pray substantially, 
not only for the same things, but largely in similar 
or identical phrases. Every Christian pulpit has 
in it the same text-book, the Bible. The words of 
prophets and apostles and the Lord himself are in 
every church the same. All Christian bodies sing 
hymns made swee*t by the name of Jesus. In nearly 
all the hymn-books church union has already been 
consummated. Christian ministers of every ecclesi- 
astical fellowship baptize men into the name of the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and make use of 
the bread and the wine in obedience to Him who 
died for all. All the great branches of the Christian 
church repeat the Apostles' Creed. All Christian 
communions produce with minor variations the same 
general type of character. The Christian saints, no 
matter whence they come, are brothers, and carry in 
their faces the same superscription. All Christians 
set before them the same model — Jesus of Nazareth. 
There is an expanding fellowship in work. The 
Protestant denominations are at the end of each dec- 
ade closer together in Christian service, and all the 
Christian bodies the world over, when not degenerate, 



198 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

perform similar works of mercy. In every commun- 
ion of the great church, Jesus Christ is the acknowl- 
edged Head. His name is above every name. All 
Christendom prostrates itself before One alone, Jesus 
Christ, proclaimed in sermon, prayer, and song the 
King of Kings and Lord of Lords. 

The glory of the church universal ought to shine 
round a man in the hour in which he is deciding which 
one of the various households of the common faith 
he shall make his home. It is a matter of critical 
moment, both for the man himself and the cause of 
Christ, that the young minister shall throw his life 
into that particular Christian group which shall en- 
able him to render largest service to the church 
universal. He should keep out of denominations 
which have no solid reason for their continued sepa- 
rate existence, and give his strength to a commun- 
ion which is testifying with conspicuous effective- 
ness to a truth which the great church needs, and 
which is keeping alive in the world a principle which 
mankind cannot afford to let die. Protestantism 
is needlessly divided, and the time has arrived when 
many of the smaller denominations, having accom- 
plished the specific purpose for which they were born, 
should surrender their corporate existence in the in- 
terest of a more effective Christianity. Young men 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 99 

of education and power cannot afford to identify 
themselves with organizations which only needlessly 
complicate the doing of the church's business, and 
which render a feeble and dwindling testimony to 
the great doctrines of the Christian faith. A man 
is under obligation to link his life in with men who 
are doing something indispensable and enduringly 
valuable for the Kingdom of God. 

Having decided upon his denomination, the 
preacher must then consider to what particular parish 
he shall give himself. Here again a wise decision can- 
not be rendered without taking into account the 
Holy Catholic Church. The minister is under obliga- 
tion to go to that one of the congregations which call 
him in which he can render largest service to the great 
church. It may be in the city or in the village, in 
some older section of the country or on its frontier, 
in the homeland or beyond the sea; it may be a 
large church or a small church, a rich church or a 
poor church, but the one thing essential is that it 
shall give unimpeded scope for the free exercise of 
the gifts of a full-grown man. The young preacher 
cannot allow himself to go into a community which 
is overchurched, and to become the pastor of an or- 
ganization which is not needed. He should not listen 
to any advisers who counsel him to squeeze himself 



200 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

into a narrow place, for the sake of maintaining the 
prestige of his denomination, or of carrying out the 
ambitious plan of some shortsighted, overzealous 
missionary secretary. The needless multiplication 
of churches is a wicked folly, and in many a com- 
munity all the churches but one ought to be allowed 
to die. To kill them outright by ecclesiastical vote, 
is at present an impossibility, but young ministers 
can possibly hasten their death by keeping away 
from them. In a world so needy as this, with mul- 
titudinous, urgent tasks calling for men, it is a tragic 
blunder for a young man to accept the pastorate of 
a church in which it is not possible for him to make 
his life count in the work of his generation. Such a 
course is ruinous in every way. The preacher him- 
self becomes dwarfed in spirit and stunted in intel- 
lect. He and his wife are likely to wear out their 
hearts in trying to live upon a salary totally inade- 
quate to their needs. Moreover, the dispositions 
created in small communities in which competing 
churches struggle for precedence, watching one an- 
other's every movement with eyes like those of 
jealous animals, are states of mind which are totally 
contrary to those which the Gospel is intended to 
foster, and render the coming of the kingdom of 
righteousness and peace and joy an utter impossi- 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 201 

bility. Keep away from the church that has no ex- 
cuse for its existence save inherited bigotry or de- 
nominational pride. A village church, or a country 
church, if it commands the field, is a great opportu- 
nity for any man, no matter how wondrously gifted. 
Because a church is poor or small is no reason why 
a seminary graduate should turn his back upon it, 
provided it has a field. But to throw one's self away 
in the attempt to keep the breath of life in one 
of six churches in a community which needs but one 
or two, is a piece of foolishness for which there is no 
justification. It is not self-sacrifice, it is suicide. 

Having chosen your denomination and your 
parish, throw yourself into your church in such a 
way as to make it a power among the churches with 
which it is connected in a common service. A 
preacher should never be ashamed of his denomina- 
tion, nor should he underestimate it. Denomina- 
tionalism is just now receiving many stripes, for its 
limitations and bitter fruits are numerous and con- 
spicuous. But after the worst has been said, it 
remains a fact that denominationalism has brought 
upon the church of Christ innumerable and im- 
measurable blessings. The revolt from Rome in the 
sixteenth century was not a mistake. The course 
pursued by Calvin was not a blunder. The re- 



202 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

fusal of the Puritans to submit to the tyranny and 
insolence of the Anglican Bishops was not an act 
to be apologized for by their descendants. The 
freeing of the Wesleyan movement from the Anglican 
church was ordained of God. It is written large 
across the face of the modern world that where the 
church is most diversely organized, there is it most 
alive. Uniformity like a bewitching dream still 
haunts many minds, but it is an ignis fatuus which 
leads nations into quagmires. It is where the church 
is most uniform that spiritual vitality is least abun- 
dant. The religious outlook is more favorable in 
Germany than in Russia, brighter in England than 
in Germany, more promising in the United States 
than in England. God seems to love variety in the 
church, as he loves it in the fields and in the sky. 
Liberty in the choice of ritual and government 
may create a temporary and disconcerting confusion, 
but it ministers mightily to life and progress. If 
by its fruits, then, we are to judge denominationalism 
the conclusion is unescapable that it has met inex- 
orable needs of a growing world. No man need be 
ashamed of belonging to a sect. The Roman Catho- 
lic and Episcopal churches, no less than the Metho- 
dist and Baptist churches, are sects, sections of the 
great Church of God. The Greek church, the Church 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 203 

of Rome, the Lutheran church, and the Church of 
England, no less than the Presbyterian and Congre- 
gational churches, are denominations, groups of be- 
lievers in the great Household of Faith. There 
is no more reason why a man should be ashamed of 
belonging to a sect, than of belonging to a regiment 
in an army. It is only by division and subdivision 
that an army is rendered effective, and so it is only 
by grouping Christians around regimental standards 
that the church of Christ at the present stage of 
development becomes manageable and capable of 
doing its largest work. A soldier does not show dis- 
respect to the army when he is loyal to his regiment. 
By regimental loyalty he increases the efficiency of 
the army. His value to the army is measured by 
his fidelity to his own division commander. It is 
only when the separate regiments are kept to a high 
standard of action, that the army comes into pos- 
session of conquering power. Every preacher is 
most loyal to the whole church of Christ when he is 
most faithful to his own denomination. The two 
are not contradictory, but denominational fidelity 
is an essential condition of catholic effectiveness. 
A preacher who is so puffed up by vague ideas of liber- 
ality as to be indifferent to the welfare and progress 
of his own denomination, is a preacher who need- 



204 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

lessly circumscribes his influence and incapacitates 
himself for rendering the largest service to the 
universal church. It is by the careful training of his 
church in the art of keeping step with the other 
churches of his regiment, that he makes his most 
valuable contribution to the fighting strength of 
the army of the Lord of Hosts. 

Ministers in the early years of- their ministry 
ought to be diligent students of their denominational 
literature. They ought to know how their denomi- 
nation came to be, the truths which it has empha- 
sized, the principles which it has glorified, the work 
which it has accomplished, and the heroes and 
saints whom it has presented to the world. They 
ought to familiarize themselves with the genius and 
features of its organization, and the methods of its 
ecclesiastical procedure, paying particular attention 
to the achievements and present enterprises of all 
its missionary organizations. No society can live 
and work without machinery. Machinery is run 
by men. To help run the denominational machin- 
ery is a part of the preacher's work. If he shirks 
it, he shows himself to be a selfish man. Laymen 
are not to be excused from work which they do not 
like, neither are preachers. If ministers preach 
self-sacrifice, they ought to practise it. Denomi- 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 205 

national meetings may not be always interesting, 
and the details of administrative business may be 
irksome, but loyalty to his denomination is one of the 
most beautiful of all the ministerial virtues, and to 
sacrifice his time and strength for the good of the 
related churches is evidence that the preacher is a 
Christian man. If ministers accept the emoluments 
and honors which come to them as members of a 
noble branch of the church of God, and leave the 
routine and necessary ecclesiastical work to their 
more unselfish brothers, it is because their conscience 
is undeveloped, and they have never been instructed 
in one of the most important of all the departments 
of clerical obligation and service. 

Denominational loyalty brings certain disciplines 
which render men more effective in the pulpit. It 
is a good thing for a preacher to know his ministerial 
brethren, especially those who are not his equals 
in attainments or position. The humblest and most 
commonplace servant of the Lord honestly toiling 
in the obscurest field, is not unworthy the compan- 
ionship of the most exalted of the pulpit princes. 
God still loves the humble and the unnoticed, 
and the man who would preach with searching power 
must keep near to those whom God loves. A 
preacher needs the widened heart, for preaching is 



206 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

primarily a business of the heart. It is a means of 
grace for a minister to know and love his brethren, 
high and low, his comrades in the arduous warfare, 
his coworkers in a hard field. He can afford to give 
time and thought — no matter how large his parish 
— to those who are pledged with him to support the 
great cause. It is good also to face strong men in 
meetings in which delicate business is transacted 
and estranging questions are debated. A preacher 
needs to encounter the views of able men who differ 
from him, and to listen to speeches advocating 
positions to which he is vigorously opposed. De- 
nominational conferences, assemblies, and councils, 
are a school in which the pulpit servants of the Lord 
receive a training which can be gotten nowhere else. 
A preacher is always speaking to people who are held 
by church etiquette from publicly expressing dissent, 
and, therefore, he above all men needs to face from 
time to time an audience which will not hesitate to 
tear his arguments to tatters, and vote down his 
most cherished propositions. Instead of retreating 
into his parish and submerging himself in parochial 
affairs, he needs to go out into the denominational 
world, and grapple with those larger problems in 
which thousands of churches are interested, and to 
combat, if necessary, in the open arena, ideas and 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 207 

tendencies which in his judgment do not make for 
the advancement of the Kingdom. It is dwarfing 
for a man to get so interested in his own congre- 
gation that he loses sight of the multitude of con- 
gregations whose life is bound up with that of his 
own. He ought to lift up his eyes and look, and 
train his people to lift up their eyes and look, upon 
the great company of comrades with whom they 
are marching. It is for him to develop in his people 
a denominational consciousness, a quickened sense 
that they belong to others. The bonds must be 
strengthened between his church and its sister 
churches. His church must be kept in touch with 
the movement of the entire body to which it belongs. 
Denominational opportunities and problems and 
enterprises ought to be given a conspicuous place, 
and the sweep of the preacher's thought should keep 
his hearers alive to the fact that they are a part 
of an interested company engaged in a common 
work, and moving toward a common goal. 

When a congregation falls out of sympathy with its 
sister congregations, and wraps itself up completely 
in its own local tasks, it is the fault of the preacher. 
An isolated preacher insulates his church. The cur- 
rents of the common life do not flow through him or 
his people. Such a preacher is not a builder. He can 



208 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

mould and place a piece of stucco, but he cannot 
construct a segment of a great arch. The vaulting 
spiritual relationships and the overarching sym- 
pathies and unities which hung always before the 
eye of the master-builder of Tarsus are clean beyond 
his ken. Alas for the preacher whose uttermost 
horizon is the narrow boundary of his own little 
parish. Why should not every preacher so live and 
labor as to help shape the ideals and dispositions 
of his entire regiment ? To influence one's denomi- 
nation, however, one must pay the price. The 
price is self-sacrificing loyalty, honest and self-abne- 
gating service. A preacher cannot influence his 
brethren unless he loves them. He cannot stand 
high in the denominational councils unless he serves. 
If any man is to be great among the churches of 
his order, he must become the servant of all. 

Here again a plea is made for narrowness in the 
interest of breadth. The preacher is to concentrate 
his powers upon his congregation for the sake of his 
denomination. He is to exalt and adorn his denomi- 
nation for the sake of the Holy Catholic Church. 
If his denomination suffers, then all the denomina- 
tions suffer with it; or if his denomination is honored, 
then all have reason to rejoice with it. The various 
denominations constitute the body of Christ, and are 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 200. 

members in particular. There should, therefore, 
be no schism, but the denominations should have 
the same care one for another. Each denomination 
does something which no other can do quite so well. 
Each performs a function which ministers to the life 
of all. Differing widely in form and structure, they 
yet belong to one another. There are diversities of 
workings, but it is the same God who worketh all 
things in all. The eye ought not to say to the hand, 
"I have no need of thee," nor again the head to the 
feet, ' ' I have no need of you. ' ' Even denominations 
which seem to be feeble may for the present be nec- 
essary, and deserve a more abundant honor. There 
are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And 
there are diversities of ministrations, and the same 
Lord. To each one is given the manifestation of 
the Spirit to profit withal. Having gifts differing 
according to the grace that was given, every denomi- 
nation ought to do superbly the particular thing 
which it feels called to do, not for its own self-ag- 
grandizement, but for the enrichment of the univer- 
sal church. If a denomination feels itself intrusted 
with the work of emphasizing a particular truth, 
then the better its work is performed, the sooner 
will other denominations be impressed by that 
truth, and be induced to give it place in their own 
p 



2IO THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

teaching and practice. If a principle is indeed a 
thought of God, and one branch of the church is led 
by the Spirit to give it a wider application in human 
life, then with every increase in the strength of this 
branch of the church comes a fresh power of this 
principle in its operation in the life of the whole. 
Every denomination intrusted with a special grace 
owes it to all the other denominations so to incarnate 
the heavenly treasure as to make it seem a desirable 
possession. Love does not require that men shall 
suppress their deepest convictions, and keep silence 
in regard to truths which the Holy Spirit has to them 
made clear. It is only by the brave and persistent 
affirmation of those things which keep welling up in 
the heart, that the whole truth finds expression and 
the church of God becomes the medium for the 
transmission of an unmutilated message. It is for 
the great church that each branch of the church 
lives and labors. Sectarianism of the baser sort 
begins with the sect and ends there. It is the 
conceit of the branch affirming that it is the vine. 
Denominationalism is always a curse when it lifts 
the denomination above the church universal. It 
is not more disgraceful to belong to a sect than it 
is for a leaf to grow on a twig or for a twig to grow 
on a branch, but it is disgraceful for the leaf to 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 211 

forget the twig, and for the branch to imagine it is 
the tree. Sectarianism when baptized into the 
spirit of Jesus ends with the great church. The 
branch drinks in the sun and the rain in order to 
add vigor and fruitfulness to the tree. It is fidelity 
to the great whole which saves the parts from petti- 
ness and decay. 

The preacher needs this vision to keep the gospel 
vital on his lips. Only men of capacious heart can 
preach with power the message which thrilled 
prophets and apostles. It is a scandal in the Chris- 
tian church when a minister is a petty man. A thin 
and stunted personality cannot be a fit channel for 
the heavenly grace. Conceited pedants, opinionated 
snobs, and supercilious dandies may stand in a 
Christian pulpit, but they cannot preach the Gospel. 
The Gospel is the message of the broadminded, 
sweet-hearted, lofty-spirited, brotherly Son of God. 
To make himself large enough to transmit even a little 
of the Master's spirit is a true preacher's lifelong 
ambition and unending struggle. The great sen- 
tences of the New Testament shrivel on the lips 
of narrow-headed zealots, who excommunicate their 
brethren who differ from them. In the eyes of God, 
he is both heretic and schismatic who by word or 
action breaks the law of love. The preacher who 



212 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

wishes to preach with the apostolic accent must 
breathe the atmosphere in which the apostles did 
their work. He must come under the power of Him 
who is the express image of the infinitely sympa- 
thetic and all-embracing God. Devotion to the 
church ought to add cubits to a man's spiritual stature 
and new diameters to the circle of his sympathies. 
If the word ecclesiastic has taken- on a dark and 
sinister meaning, it is only an added proof of the 
wizardry of the mystery of evil which is able to 
corrupt human hearts even when engaged with 
things holiest and highest. 

It is wholesome to form the habit of speaking of 
the church as the Church of God. The phrase is 
apostolic and breathes a majesty and elevation 
which adjectives coined in denominational mints are 
likely to obscure. Along with the books which deal 
with the history and teachings of his own denomina- 
tion, the preacher should find room for volumes 
telling the story of other communions which have 
also borne the burden, and which are making certain 
by their sacrifices the ultimate triumph of Christ. 
In no branch of the Christian church has God left 
himself without a witness, and if we are to judge re- 
ligious organizations by their fruits, then all of them 
have won his favor, for all have received manifold 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 213 

tokens of his grace. There is no study more 
profitable for the preacher than the study of the 
lives of saints and martyrs reared in communions 
outside his own. It breaks down native bigotries 
and inherited prejudices, and brings the soul to the 
place in which the astonished Peter found himself 
when he cried out in the hearing of his incredulous 
fellow-countrymen who were resisting the admission 
of the Gentiles into the church, "If then God gave 
unto them the like gift as he did also unto us, 
who was I that I could withstand God?" To all 
the groups of men who have lived and labored in the 
power of Christ has God granted repentence unto 
life, and from every denomination can the preacher 
gather wealth with which to make himself and his 
people rich. 

But better than communing with the souls of 
men who are in their graves is holding fellow- 
ship with men who are now alive. Every preacher 
should make friends outside of his own denomina- 
tional household. It tones up the heart to com- 
mune with saints of Christian churches far removed 
in tradition and custom from one's own. Each ec- 
clesiastical discipline imparts a peculiar blessing to 
those who are subjected to it, which can be com- 
municated in a measure by its possessors to those 



214 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

whom God has educated in a different school. 
The preacher who is content to know his denomi- 
national brethren only, and who has no desire to min- 
gle with those who see the truth from a different an- 
gle and express it in a different terminology, robs 
himself of a means of spiritual culture which, if used, 
would make him a stronger preacher and a nobler 
man. Nothing ministers more effectively to the 
cause of Christian unity than the bringing of clergy- 
men of different denominations together. Denomi- 
national isolation breeds suspicion and raises many 
a spectre in the mind. We are always farthest from 
the men we know the least. It is easy to say un- 
charitable things about a body of Christians with not 
one of whose members we are acquainted. Men who 
have friends in all denominations never degenerate 
into bigots, and sometimes become prophets of rec- 
onciliation. The preacher must be a man with a 
friendly heart. He must be the friend of publicans 
and sinners, and also of saints who do not agree with 
him in many of his customs and ideas. It is a great 
thing to be just to those who differ from us in opinion 
upon matters which we consider momentous, and it is 
a still greater thing to be generous. To value virtues 
which are unlike those which our fathers counted 
cardinal, and to appreciate teachings which have 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 215 

to us an unfamiliar sound, is not easy. To put one's 
self into the other man's place is in every depart- 
ment of life difficult, probably nowhere more diffi- 
cult than in the realm of religion. But to do this is a 
manifest duty of every Christian, and especially of 
the preacher. The preacher who makes disparag- 
ing remarks or ungenerous statements about other 
branches of the church, or who caricatures their 
doctrines, forfeits the respect of all right-minded 
men. A speaker is never under such obligation to 
be scrupulously correct, down to the last syllable, as 
when he attempts to state the position of men from 
whom he differs. If the preacher wishes to contro- 
vert the doctrines of another religious body, let him 
study those doctrines as presented by their ablest ex- 
ponents, and then state them in the most plausible 
manner in which it is possible for them to be put. 
Christian scholars are not fools even if they do not 
follow after us, and their positions are not to be 
overturned by a caricature or a jeer, but by an 
argument framed of reasons which will win the as- 
sent of the unprejudiced mind. Controversy is a 
hazardous and exacting business, and the man who 
enters it must have clean hands and a pure heart. 
Useless controversy is always to be avoided, and 
most pulpit controversies are useless. The con- 



2l6 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

troversial preacher is as a rule an unprofitable ser- 
vant. Even if he keeps his own spirit sweet, he is 
likely to ruffle the hearts of his hearers. The net 
result of his labors is ordinarily nothing. Few 
things are settled by controversy. It is by empha- 
sizing the things upon which all Christians are agreed, 
rather than by harping upon the things about which 
they differ, that the divisions of Christendom are to be 
healed. Each denomination must work out its own 
salvation, and the best thing which surrounding 
denominations can do is to hold up a light. Let the 
preacher attempt to reform his own church family 
rather than try to set right his neighbors. Sending 
a chilling gale of criticism against a neighboring 
church has a tendency to cause it to draw its obnox- 
ious mantle more closely about it. Churches ac- 
complish most when they shine. It is not when 
they cudgel one another, but when each one goes 
out with its lamp burning to meet its Lord, that they 
get rid of their errors, and come closest together. 
The church farthest from our Protestant churches 
is the Roman Catholic, and none, therefore, is 
better worth our knowing. A Protestant preacher 
who is not acquainted with the history and doctrines 
of the Roman Catholic church has been negligent 
at a point at which carelessness is calamitous. Be- 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 21 7 

cause of its size, embracing nearly one-half of 
all the Christians in the world, because of its long 
history, extending through so many centuries, and 
because of its present power over the lives of men 
and nations, it deserves above all other religious 
organizations to be studied and understood. Both 
Protestants and Catholics are less informed of each 
other's doctrines than they ought to be, and it is the 
ignorance on both sides which is accountable for 
many things which good men have reason to deplore. 
The fact that Roman Catholics differ so widely 
from us at many points renders patient and sym- 
pathetic study doubly necessary. It is easy to mis- 
understand those who are far away. By the haze 
of distance virtues are often hidden and vices enor- 
mously magnified. To understand his Roman Cath- 
olic brethren is one of the urgent duties of a Protes- 
tant minister. The teachings of Catholicism should 
be learned from her own authors, undistorted and un- 
colored by the interpretations of Protestant exposi- 
tors. We do not hesitate to kindle our spirits at the 
fire which burns in Augustine's " Confessions," or in 
Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ," and we 
gladly acknowledge our indebtedness to men like 
Francis of Assisi, and Bernard of Clairvaux. It is 
also worth one's while to study Roman Catholic histo- 



2l8 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

ries, and to master the arguments of the great Roman 
Catholic theologians. But better still than knowing 
Roman Catholic books, is knowing living Roman 
Catholic men. There is no substitute for fellowship, 
and when Roman Catholic priests and Protestant 
ministers come to know one another, the chasm 
between the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds 
will be less deep than it is. It is the separation of the 
two sets of men from each other which has perpetu- 
ated suspicions and ill-will that ought to have 
died long ago. To many a Protestant the candles 
and the incense and the sanctus bell are so foreign, 
that the Roman Catholic church seems to belong to 
another world. Between the pomp of the gorgeous 
ceremonial before the grand altar, and the unadorned 
simplicity of a Protestant order of service, there 
appears to be no point in common. But when de- 
vout Protestants and Catholics meet in the fellow- 
ship of friendly intercourse they discover that they 
are not so far apart as it seemed. Underneath the 
paraphernalia of Roman Catholicism there beats a 
great Christian heart, and a Protestant preacher 
ought to know it and enter into sympathy with it. 
It is a blessing to any Protestant minister to num- 
ber among his friends a few noble Catholic priests. 
Through these friends he will see the whole Catholic 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 210. 

church in a new light, and because of them he will 
be less inclined to say bitter things of Roman Catho- 
lic errors. That Roman Catholicism has overlaid 
the simplicity of the gospel with needless mysteries 
and bewildering traditions, and teaches certain doc- 
trines which are erroneous and therefore mischiev- 
ous, is a fact of which an instructed Protestant has 
no doubt. That some of her practices are dangerous 
and some of her emphases overdone, is also a fact 
which cannot be hidden. But there is something 
more in Roman Catholicism than error, and all her 
actions are not blunders. In every century she has 
given the world scholars, saints, and martyrs, and 
while her sins have been crimson, she is not without 
achievements of imperishable renown. If she has 
not always treated Protestants with mercy or even 
justice, our duty to her remains the same. We 
are to remember that she is not the only sinner, 
and that we too are not free from guilt. If, ecclesi- 
astically speaking, she curses us, we are nevertheless 
to bless her. If she hates us, we are to pray for 
her, and if she persecutes us and despitefully uses 
us in all countries in which she has the power, we 
are, in all ways which are open, to do good unto her. 
To brood over wrongs committed centuries ago, to 
feel resentment toward men now living because of 



220 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

what men did whose bodies have long since been 
dust, to exploit the moral delinquencies of unworthy 
men who may officiate at her altars, to coin suspi- 
cions into slanders, and convert inferences into 
wholesale condemnations, this is not worthy of any 
man who calls himself a Christian, and in Protestant 
ministers it is monstrous. Wherein the Roman 
Catholic church is in need of reformation, we can 
help her most by genuine sympathy and whole- 
hearted affection and good- will. We cannot refrain 
from teaching and preaching certain doctrines which 
are contrary to hers, for to be silent would be to be 
recreant to the trust which has been given us, and 
would withhold from her the blessing which we feel 
sure we are able to impart. But we can hold our 
tongue from slander, and can keep back our lips 
from speaking sentences which stab and burn. We 
can speak the truth in love, and when we differ 
we can do it in a way which shows unutterable 
regret. Instead of dwelling upon her failures and 
her errors, we can meditate occasionally upon the 
good things which she has long been doing and which 
she is doing still. We can rejoice that she trains men 
to worship. It is her glory that she teaches men to 
kneel. She builds up in human hearts the sense of 
reverence, and leaves men awestruck and wondering. 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 221 

The world is indebted to her for bending the human 
knee. She teaches the principle of obedience. She 
believes in subordination. These are divine prin- 
ciples which need emphasis, and in building them 
into the souls of men is she ministering to all man- 
kind. She exalts and glorifies the duty of loyalty to 
the church. The love of devout Catholics for the 
church is inexpressibly beautiful. For the church, 
Catholics will make all sacrifices. Their devotion 
travels all the way to the gates of death. She has 
the sense of solidarity and feels the power of the 
subtle links which bind the generations together. 
Her saints run backward through the centuries, and 
she trains men to think of the church as a vast so- 
ciety extended over the earth and sweeping into the 
heavens, gathering into itself all the affections of the 
heart, and the entire circle of the interests of man- 
kind. Before the eyes of the devout Roman Catho- 
lic the church of God looms sovereign and glorious, 
the very home and shrine of the Eternal. If we 
have much to teach her, she has also much to teach 
us. If she has overemphasized certain principles, 
we have overemphasized others. If she has over- 
looked important truths, we also have not been free 
from dimsightedness. It is a solace and a strength 
to know that Catholics and Protestants belong to- 



222 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

gether, and that, in spite of our many differences, we 
care in the depths of our aspirations and hopes one. 

Prepare, then, by your preaching the way which 
shall lead to a reunited church. It doth not yet 
appear what this church unity shall be, but we know 
that when it appears it shall have a form which the 
Lord himself approves. When it shall come no 
man knows, possibly not even the angels of God. 
It is not for us to know times and seasons, but 
power has been promised, and by that power we are 
to conquer the alienations and separations of Chris- 
tendom. Every man now entering the ministry 
ought to ponder the fact that there is a world-wide 
yearning for Christian unity and also for church 
union. This is one of the signs of the times which 
preachers are called to interpret. The Spirit of 
God is saying something to all of our churches, and 
it is for the men in the pulpits to train the congre- 
gations to listen. 

But the reunion of Christendom is not coming in a 
day, nor as the result of any adroitly devised scheme. 
The men who rush up and down the world exploiting 
plausible programs for bringing separated commun- 
ions together, are not the men who are doing most to 
put an end to our regrettable divisions. It is not by 
propositions or compromises that the mighty mir- 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 223 

acle is to be wrought, but by the baptism of the hu- 
man heart into a nobler spirit, and a fuller entrance 
on the part of Christian people into the thought and 
life of God. Before we have church union we must 
all go deeper and rise higher. Men say, "Lo, here 
is a platform upon which we all can stand/' or "Lo, 
there are conditions which we are all able to accept," 
but he who is wise will not place undue confidence 
in the promises of the vehement and pushing proph- 
ets. Unity is a growth and not a manufactured prod- 
uct. Growths cannot be forced without deranging 
the processes of life. Forced reunions result in fresh 
divisions. The churches cannot be welded together 
by the hammers of our flaming ecclesiastical states- 
men. They must be permitted to grow together, for, 
be it not forgotten, the building upon which preachers 
are working partakes of the qualities of an edifice 
and also of a living organism, and no matter how 
industrious and ingenious the workmen, they are 
compelled to wait patiently for the completion of the 
foreordained stages of a development winch human 
ingenuity is unable to hasten or alter. It is a para- 
dox of Christianity that to go fast, one must go slow. 
In the realm of the spirit the shortest distance be- 
tween two points is not a straight line. During the 
last fifty years the churches have been growing to- 



224 TH E HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

gether. Much of the bitterness and belligerency has 
already disappeared. Open hostility has well-nigh 
ceased in all communities in which the people have 
emerged from the stone age. In large sections of 
the Christian world the various communions are at 
present going their several ways, no longer caring 
to tight one another, but not quite prepared yet to 
love one another. We have the quietude of indif- 
ference, but not the full-toned harmony of consent- 
ing minds. But here and there are signs of a new 
era. It is daybreak in many lands. The principle 
of denominational comity is receiving a widening 
recognition, and cooperation is being extended over 
larger fields. Federation on a limited scale has already 
passed from the realm of hope into that of fact, while 
a few audacious spirits even dare to dream of an or- 
ganic union that shall take in the entire Protestant 
world. The young men are seeing visions and the 
old men are dreaming dreams, and some beautiful 
thing will some day come to pass. Whatever a 
preacher may think of the present practicability 
of organic union, or even of federation, he is under 
obligation to make the church of which he is the 
pastor increasingly Christian. He cannot escape the 
duty of working in season and out of season for a 
fuller Christian unity. Out of a richer spiritual unity 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 225 

will come, in God's good time, new comities, fresh 
federations, and amazing organic unions. If he 
desires church union, then let the preacher develop 
the spirit of Christian unity. Let him exorcise by 
his sermons the demons of suspicion, jealousy, big- 
otry, exclusiveness, and ecclesiastical snobbishness, 
and endeavor to set his people in the right attitude 
to all who take upon their lips the blessed name. 
Let him build up the art of sympathy, the capacity 
of appreciation, and the principle of cooperation, 
and give to his church a corporate consciousness, 
a catholic spirit, a friendly disposition toward all 
who bow at the name of Jesus. This is foundation 
work, and a deal of it must still be done before we are 
prepared to attempt any of those imposing super- 
structures of church union which tantalize the im- 
agination and set the heart beating. The selfish- 
ness of the old individualism runs like a virus in the 
blood, and the present generation is not prepared 
for those larger forms of union which, please God, are 
sure to come. Many a man has wasted his life in 
pushing things which were premature. It is tragic 
for men to try to lift the world by ecclesiastical 
devices to a position which it is the divine will shall 
be attained only by a steady and silent growth con- 
tinued through many seasons. The organic union 

Q 



226 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

of all Christian bodies is below the horizon of us who 
are now living, but the work of promoting spiritual 
unity is practicable and urgent. In spite of dif- 
ferences in organization and diversities of worship, 
the branches of the church can be brought closer 
together in aspiration and endeavor. Congregations 
can be lifted above the things which divide and 
alienate. We can plan and lift together. We can 
join our forces in the work of casting out demons. 
We can all join in the sacrament of the Basin and 
Towel. It is impossible to obliterate in the present 
century all the marks of division, but every one of 
us can contribute something to the growing unity 
of the Holy Catholic Church. 

Preachers need the inspiration which comes from 
the vision of the great church to keep their hearts 
from fainting in the day of battle. It is disastrous 
to a preacher to have an outlook which is narrowed. 
Human nature is prone to despondency, and, how- 
ever optimistic the temperament of the preacher, 
the down-pulling force of the world's unbelief is sure 
to leave its mark upon him. The tremendous power 
of evil grows upon the Christian worker through the 
years. There is no mystery so deep as the mystery 
of iniquity, except the mystery of love. A young 
man, confident in his strength, feels during the 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 227 

earlier years of his ministry that he can successfully 
cope with this mystery of evil, possibly overcome it. 
So Elijah felt, and so have all young men felt in the 
first flush of their initial victories. But as life ad- 
vances, the battlefield widens, and the warrior be- 
gins to see that he is wrestling not against flesh and 
blood, but against the principalities, against the 
powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, 
against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the 
heavenly places. It is when the implacable enemy 
reveals undreamed-of ranges of his infernal and im- 
measurable strength, that the preacher needs to 
throw himself back on the doctrine of the Holy 
Catholic Church. His own little congregation is as 
nothing in so great a war, his denomination, however 
large, shrinks into insignificance, a score of Christian 
communions seem all too few to meet and conquer 
so formidable a foe. But when he lifts up his eyes 
and takes in the holy apostolic universal church, with 
its thundering brigades and wide-flung battle line, 
and sees how many cohorts of the Lord's soldiers are 
contending on the wide field, and notes the splendid 
strength of phalanxes of warriors whose courage and 
loyalty he had forgotten to count on, and whose 
very existence had for a time escaped his mind, it is 
then that he sees Satan falling like lightning from 



228 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

heaven, and enters into the peace of one who has al- 
ready conquered. 

Give yourself horizon. Keep your sky from be- 
coming low. Allow your thought wide ranges. Let 
your heart roam. Furnish your sympathies spacious 
room. Look beyond your parish. Take in other 
parishes. Your parish is the world. Look beyond 
your denomination. You belong to them all. All 
things are yours if you are Christ's. Keep alive in 
your people the consciousness that they belong to a 
vast multitude whom no man can number. Do not 
live exclusively in the present. Live also in the past. 
Look back often to the Reformation, that fiery fur- 
nace in which the makers of our modern world walked 
unharmed, because protected by the presence of the 
Son of man. Do not stop at the Reformation. 
Take in with the sweep of your eye the thousand 
years that preceded Luther, in which God moved in 
mysterious ways in the work of subjugating barbaric 
Europe to a gentler temper. Let your glance take in 
all the epochs of the Christian era, back to the days 
of the apostles. Link yourself and your church into 
the chain of life which runs to Golgotha. Never 
get away from the revelation of God in Christ. 
Think of the church as an ambassador, treading the 
highway of the centuries, holding in her keeping the 



THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 229 

oracles of God, earth's inspired teacher inculcating 
truths without which the hearts of nations utterly 
fail, a heaven-sent companion upon whose arm hu- 
manity leans as it pursues with bruised, bleeding 
feet the steep and hazardous way, a vast and ever 
growing society linking nationalities and races to- 
gether, the inspirer of music and painting and archi- 
tecture, the enlightener of men's minds and the 
searcher of men's hearts, taming the wild ages and curb- 
ing the fierce forces, bringing under her dominion every 
type of genius, and every variety of temper, feeding 
the souls of heroes and martyrs and saints, and by 
her glorious ideals and imperishable traditions strik- 
ing a new unity through a disordered and hopeless 
world. Let your vision be wide as the earth. Even 
its full sweeping circumference is not the limit of all 
that is, for touching it are the clouds of glory which 
conceal from human eyes the world invisible and 
the church triumphant. Your church is a part of 
the family which inhabits the world and the ages, 
sweeping beyond mortal sight into the upper 
splendors. In heaven we shall understand, as it is 
impossible to understand here, the length and 
breadth and depth of the meaning of the worn and 
wonderful words : "I believe in the Holy Catholic 
Church, the communion of Saints." 



LECTURE VII 
BUILDING THE PLAN 



BUILDING THE PLAN 

If a cardinal condition of success in the Christian 
ministry is an unclouded vision of the thing to be 
done, a second essential is the formulation of a plan 
by which the work shall be accomplished. First, 
the vision of the goal, then the method of reaching 
it. There are two classes of ministers whose careers 
are tragic. The first are those who see not clearly 
what it is they are to do. The world for them lies 
shrouded in a mist. They walk like men in a fog. 
The second see with some degree of clearness the 
destination, but they are too careless or precipitate 
to build the agencies by which the goal can be at- 
tained. Both classes of men arrive nowhere, the 
first because they do not know where they want to go, 
the second because they lack the wisdom of fitting 
means to ends. 

If we think of the Christian minister as a builder, 
the necessity of planning presses itself at once upon 
the mind. What is an architect but a designer, and 
what is a builder but a man who makes and follows 
plans ? Before a pencil is put to paper, the architect 

233 



234 BUILDING THE PLAN 

sees the building which is to be ; and before the first 
shovel of earth is turned for the foundation, speci- 
fications have been accurately and voluminously 
elaborated. Builders never dash ahead, not know- 
ing whither they are going. The planning intellect 
has gone before them, carefully marking out the way. 
The depth and thickness of the foundations, the 
length and composition of all the walls, the dimen- 
sions of every chamber, the location of every door 
and window, the position of every pipe and wire and 
chimney, a thousand details are thought out and 
fixed before the stones are blasted from the quarry 
or the first load of lumber is ordered from the mill. 
It is not the way of builders to plunge blindly into 
their work, trusting to the inspiration of the moment 
or some happy conjunction of events to guide them 
in the shaping of the structure for which the world is 
waiting. Doors and windows camiot be located at 
the dictate of a passing fancy, nor can the propor- 
tions of an edifice which is to delight the eyes and 
serve the needs of many generations be left to the 
caprice of men who have started with no definite 
conception of how the different parts of the building 
are to be organized into a well-balanced and service- 
able whole. When men dedicate themselves to the 
construction of a cathedral, months, and it may be 



BUILDING THE PLAN 235 

years, are devoted to the perfecting of the plan. The 
voids are spaced, the solids are proportioned, the 
contours are traced. There is a central idea, and 
everything develops from something else. It is only 
by painstaking planning that the proportions are at 
last made perfect, and the arrangement becomes so 
natural that it seems to be inevitable. Preaching is 
a science and an art. Preachers are architects and 
artists. Men are living stones to be built into a 
growing temple. They who work upon this tem- 
ple must understand and obey the subtle and in- 
exorable laws of spiritual architecture. They must 
restrain caprice. They must work with a firm and 
steady hand, the hand made steady by a far-seeing 
eye. The eye must see what ought to be, and trace 
the lines of what is to be, and all the preacher's toil 
must be cooperant to an end. 

The man who is called to the work of church build- 
ing ought to study and practise the art of planning. 
The plan itself is a sort of edifice to be built by pa- 
tient thought and conscientious care. It is not a 
waste of time to give hours and days to the work of 
pondering and maturing schedules for future opera- 
tions. Each day should be surveyed from the van- 
tage point of its earliest working hour, each week 
should be mapped before its first day has reached 



236 BUILDING THE PLAN 

its noon, each month should be laid out before it has 
arrived. The preacher should work upon his plan 
continually, modifying it from time to time in obedi- 
ence to the movements of the divine spirit, perfecting 
it in the illumination of the increasing light. His 
plan is an invisible temple in whose construction the 
sound of hammers is never heard, but which, though 
a purely spiritual creation, and known to God and 
the preacher only, is a potent factor in giving shape 
and beauty to the temple built of flesh and blood 
which is to stand before the world. 

The best of all times for the work of planning is 
a minister's vacation. This is one of the two best 
uses to which a vacation can be put. The first 
object of a vacation is relaxation. The bow which 
is always bent deteriorates in value as a weapon. 
The field from which the same crop is year after 
year demanded, after a while runs out. The brain 
is like the soil and must be given seasons to lie 
fallow. No mind can give out perpetually. There 
must be extended periods for receiving. The 
largest reservoir in time becomes empty if a con- 
stant stream flows out and no compensating stream 
flows in. When ministers cross the deadline at 
fifty, it is because they have been lazy, or because 
they have worked so continuously as to fag the 



BUILDING THE PLAN 237 

brain. When the mental field is exhausted, the 
sermonic crops are thin, and the saints begin to say 
of the man in the pulpit, "He is a good man, but he 
cannot preach." In some cases it is the saints which 
are largely responsible for this tragic ending of a 
minister's career. Because of their ignorance they 
allowed their pastor no sufficient vacation, and by 
holding him unbrokenly to his task, they killed his 
mind. And they also wore out his heart. His heart 
became fatigued, and he could not bring to his work 
the elasticity and spring of a healthy spirit, or infuse 
into his sermons the freshness of a soul which has 
retained its buoyancy and sparkle. A preacher is a 
catapult. He is always hurling things, ideas, argu- 
ments, exhortations, expositions. To accomplish 
his ends he must project himself. His office compels 
him to" throw his soul upon the souls of others. 
But this work, if continued through too long a 
stretch, is hurtful to the man who does it, and may 
prove fatal to him. A man cannot be a catapult all 
the time. The expulsive muscles of the mind must 
be given respite. The receptive faculties must have 
opportunity to grow and gather stores. The minis- 
ter must at times sit down. He must let others feed 
him. Like the Man of Men, he must go apart into a 
desert place and rest awhile. This is his duty. He 



238 BUILDING THE PLAN 

shirks it at his peril. Every minister should have 
at least one month out of every twelve for relaxa- 
tion. If the parish is large, two months are better 
than one. In any case, two weeks is no vacation at 
all. One week is required for clearing out the mind 
so that the minister is able to rest, and the second 
week loses its healing virtue if broken into by pre- 
paration for the sermons for the first- Sunday after 
his return. Nothing less than a month deserves 
the name of vacation for a preacher. If church 
officials are unwilling to grant one month in twelve, 
they should be instructed. Men who mean well 
often crucify God's servants, not knowing what 
they do. Pastorates must of necessity be short, 
if ministers are not given reasonable spaces for 
recuperation. It should be the ambition of every 
church and all pastors to make the pastorate 
long. 

It is when the minister is not driven by the duties 
of the ordinary days that he can best plan for the 
work of the coming year. One can see his church 
best when he gets away from it. Detachment sup- 
plies the eyes with new lenses. An artist working 
in oil steps back again and again from the canvas 
in order to see what he is doing. The minister 
should every year stand back from his church, and 



BUILDING THE PLAN 239 

examine it in the light of a changed perspective. 
At his leisure he can observe how far the develop- 
ment of his ideal has progressed, and may possibly 
discover defects which had escaped his notice. 
He will find that certain things have gotten out of 
their true relations, and certain other things do not 
exist in correct proportions. The shadows are too 
intense, the high lights are not strong enough. The 
emphasis has been too insistent at certain points, 
and there are drifts and tendencies which need 
immediate attention. Many a valley must be ex- 
alted, and several hills must be brought low in order 
that the way of the Lord may be prepared. A care- 
ful survey of the last year's work is an excellent 
discipline for fitting one to plan intelligently for the 
year to come. A wise minister is never idle on his 
vacation. There are a hundred things which he can 
attend to while he is sitting down. He can mend 
his nets. They have become worn and possibly 
torn by the hard usage of the year, and he can now 
look them over and repair them. Certain methods 
have proved faulty, and these can be investigated 
and improved. What is the church itself but a big 
net let down into the human sea? It is always 
getting torn, and the minister on his vacation can 
leisurely examine the rents. He can deal with his 



240 BUILDING THE PLAN 

church as a physician treats a patient, making a 
careful diagnosis, ascertaining the weak spots in the 
organism, and deciding on certain courses of treat- 
ment which promise to bring the invalid into fuller 
health. He can look the church over as a teacher 
surveys his school, asking himself what are the 
pupils' chief defects, and what are the graces to 
which most thought and time should- be devoted in 
order to bring the school up to the standard pre- 
scribed by the Great Teacher. He can inspect his 
church as a general sizes up his army, counting 
up the troops which are available for action, making 
a roll of those who are in the hospital unable to bear 
the shock of battle, or even the fatigue of the march. 
He can mentally reconnoitre the country of the 
enemy, studying his position, pondering his re- 
sources, speculating as to his probable powers of 
resistance, and calculating the chances of a victorious 
attack. He can scrutinize his church as a builder 
runs his eyes up and down a building, noting the 
cracks and stains, measuring the extent of the dilapi- 
dation which time and wear have wrought, and 
devising plans for its cleansing and complete res- 
toration. A minister ought to come back from his 
vacation knowing what he is going to do. If, in the 
quiet hours of his holiday, he has on mountain side, 



BUILDING THE PLAN 241 

or by the sea, or under some ancient oak or pine, 
or on the waters of some lovely lake, looked at his 
church with eyes made keen by love, and has made 
mental note of its deficiencies and delinquencies, 
and has catalogued its opportunities and immediate 
obligations, and if he has meditated on the difficul- 
ties of the situation, and weighed the obstacles which 
must be overcome, and if he has balanced in his 
mind the comparative merits of different plans of 
campaign, and has decided which one gives largest 
promise of success, he will carry in his soul an in- 
spiration which will communicate itself to his people, 
and will find himself endowed with a strength and 
courage which will lighten the heaviest burdens and 
throw round the most desperate enterprises the halo 
of hopefulness. A church likes to feel itself in the 
grip of a man who knows where he is going. Noth- 
ing is so discouraging to Christian people as to feel 
that their leader is not leading. The outlook is 
indeed dark if the preacher does not know what 
things he and his church ought to bring to pass. 
Simply to keep the church machinery running for 
the sake of seeing the wheels go round, is a vexation 
of spirit, driving church members into the mood of 
the man who exclaimed : " Vanity of vanities, all 
is vanity." A minister has not made the highest 



242 BUILDING THE PLAN 

possible use of his vacation unless he comes out of 
it with a plan for the next year's work. 

The benefits of a plan are manifold. It helps the 
minister save his soul. It protects him against the 
encroachments of all sorts of idle and thoughtless 
people who are ready to eat up a minister's strength 
and time. A man who has not had actual experience 
in the Christian ministry has not the faintest con- 
ception of the pressure, constant and tremendous, 
to which a pastor is subjected. His tasks are multi- 
tudinous, and he is in peril of being dissipated and 
broken by them. When one has too many things 
to do, he becomes bewildered and helpless. The 
young preacher is likely to be pushed hither and 
thither by people and events, until the week becomes 
a turmoil and a tangle. Driven by forces which are 
as pitiless as furies, he feels sometimes like a straw 
blown about by the parish wind. His good inten- 
tions are smashed to splinters by the impact of 
chance happenings. The world is full of good- 
hearted but inconsiderate people, amiable, but 
cruel because they do not think. Men who have no 
connection with the church rush to the minister 
when they have axes to grind. He is asked to do a 
hundred things which he ought not to attempt to do. 
The ministry has in it many exhausted men who 






BUILDING THE PLAN 243 

have frittered away their energies on a multitude 
of unrelated errands and bootless projects. Caught 
in this seething whirlpool of parochial activity, 
the preacher suddenly finds himself face to face with 
a new Lord's day calling for two sermons which he 
has had no time to prepare. He goes into the pulpit 
shamefaced, knowing that his message is not related 
to the message that preceded it, or to the message 
which is likely to come after it, but is a haphazard 
thing extemporized to meet the emergency of an 
embarrassing occasion. A man who works in this 
fashion is not an artist. He is a clodhopper. He 
is living from hand to mouth and therefore belongs 
to the shiftless and defective classes. The church of 
such a minister will be an unshapely, ungainly thing, 
and as soon as possible he will exchange it for an- 
other. 

A definite and well-considered plan is a min- 
ister's life preserver. It helps him to hold the out- 
side world in its place, and to keep his parish from 
crushing him. A good-natured man, unless he is 
shielded by a plan, is apt to be wheedled into all 
sorts of useless undertakings and inveigled into 
many kinds of intellectual and social dissipation. 
The minister is indeed the servant of all, but this 
does not mean that he is to be the drudge of every 



244 BUILDING THE PLAN 

little despot who crosses his path and beckons to 
him. He is the servant of all, and therefore cannot 
allow himself to be undone by a foolish few. A 
preacher should plan his study hours, and hedge 
them in with a wall of fire. He should plan his 
social life, and keep himself rigorously within the 
bounds which his own good sense has circumscribed. 
He should live within his income. Are there not 
twelve hours in the day, and has not the stock of 
nervous energy also its limitations ? A man cannot 
do everything he would like to do, or everything 
which other people want him to do, or everything 
which the world tells him he ought to do. He must 
pick and choose the particular things which he is 
convinced God wants him to do, and when undiscern- 
ing and meddlesome people urge him to do this and 
that and beg him to go here and there, let him think 
of the Man who never once allowed himself to be 
elbowed from his path, calmly saying, "My hour 
is not yet come." 

A plan saves the minister from the tyranny of his 
own moods and caprices. Most preachers have 
moods in abundance, and of luxuriant variety. 
Inspirational men are exceptionally sensitive, and 
responsive to their environment. It is because they 
can be moved that they are able to move others. 



BUILDING THE PLAN 245 

Coarse-grained and stolid men never make inspiring 
preachers. The temperament which fits a man to 
become the medium of the spirit of life is specially 
susceptible to wayward inspirations and depress- 
ing humors. The preacher, more than most men, 
fluctuates in the tone of his feelings. He is up and 
down, exalted and abased, in heaven and not in 
heaven. Like Elijah he is jubilant to-day on 
Carmel, and to-morrow he is under the Juniper tree. 
This week he has the best church in the world, 
next week he is meditating the paragraphs of his 
letter of resignation. These elations and depres- 
sions are psychological experiences with which 
ministers, with few exceptions, are compelled to 
contend. It is well to plan for them in order that 
they may not work havoc. Many a minister in a 
despondent mood has taken a step which has rilled 
years with regret. No man is himself in his depleted 
hours. The judgment gets twisted when the fires 
of life burn low. Virtue is going out of a minister 
all the time, because some one is always touching 
him. The drain of the blood of the nerves is con- 
stant. He should save himself from himself by a 
plan. A plan is a bulwark against aberrations. 
Every man has his luminous hours, and a plan 
formed in the light can be carried out through 



246 BUILDING THE PLAN 

hours of gloom. The path which one has seen from 
the mountain can be followed even after it has been 
blurred by the inblowing mist. A plan is a bridge 
which carries the preacher over rushing torrents of 
dark feeling, an angel which protects him through the 
storm of the wild night. The soul of a preacher is 
not secure without a plan. 

It is by planning that a minister also escapes from 
the clutches of the demon of indefiniteness. Vague- 
ness of expression, vagueness of thought, vagueness 
of policy, these constitute a trinity of demons which 
the preacher must at all costs overcome. Demons 
do not like plans. They are all opposed to order, 
for order is heaven's first lav/. They are the 
friends of confusion, the makers of chaos. If a 
preacher can be induced to follow his impulses and 
to rely on his fitful enthusiasms, the infernal world 
rejoices. It is the man who sits down and counts the 
cost of the tower who is most likely to finish it. 
It is the general who carefully calculates the re- 
sources both of himself and of his enemy who in- 
creases his chances of winning the victory. The suc- 
cessful preacher is the man who first of all takes 
time to ascertain precisely what it is he wants to do, 
and then takes additional time for working out his 
plan of doing it. When a preacher preaches, and 



BUILDING THE PLAN 247 

men go home from the sermon not knowing what 
the preacher was trying to accomplish, and when 
he works an entire year among his people and leaves 
them at the end of the year in doubt as to what he 
wanted them to do and be, he is a workman of whom 
the church of God has reason to be ashamed. The 
preacher ought to work upon his plan in order to 
sharpen his mind. He can dissipate a fog by creating 
a program. It is only by building a good plan that 
he can save himself from the humiliation of making 
a botch of his church. 

For the sake also of the people the minister ought 
to plan his work. It is a wonderful liberty which is 
granted to ministers, and the liberty ought to be 
used humbly and in the fear of God. To them is 
given the privilege of determining not only what 
hymns shall be sung, what truths shall be unfolded, 
what duties enforced, what warnings shall be 
sounded, what consolations administered, but also, 
except in liturgical churches, what Scripture shall 
be read, and what shall be the length and character 
of all the prayers. The whole ordering, not only 
of public worship, but of parochial activity, is left 
practically in their hands. It is a heavy responsi- 
bility not always appreciated, a solemn trust which 
is oftentimes abused. If the minister does not plan 



248 BUILDING THE PLAN 

his work, his people are at the mercy of his impulses 
and fancies, his prejudices and idiosyncrasies, pos- 
sibly his vagaries and hallucinations. He will, un- 
less he guards himself against it, follow his natural 
likings, choosing always the line of least resistance, 
and thus he will give his people not what they ought 
to have, but what it happens to be easiest for him to 
give. In this way he will fall into ruts and even 
gullies, dragging all his unhappy flock with him. 
His instruction will lack balance. The life of 
the parish will languish, struck through with the 
deadening monotone of a selfish man. The impulses 
of the passing hour are poor guides in the realm of 
ministerial duty. The preacher must use his reason. 
He should present to God and his parish a reason- 
able service. Having looked backward and forward 
and all around, he should lay out his work on a 
rational basis, with due consideration to all the 
different interests which have a right to be recog- 
nized. A plan drawn by the reason tugs at a man 
and pulls him in spite of his biases and preferences 
into wider orbits. The man who plans for his people 
crucifies many of his own fancies and foibles. The 
human heart, even in the breast of a preacher, 
is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately 
sick. The deceitfulness can be in a measure cir- 



BUILDING THE PLAN 249 

cumvented by a plan. Who has not seen a minister 
riding proudly down the Appian Way of his own 
tastes and ambitions, dragging his parish at his 
chariot wheels ? But if the church be the bride of 
Christ, it is she who is in the chariot, and the 
preacher is her servant. She is reading the book of 
Life, and like the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip 
overtook, she is perplexed by certain paragraphs 
and phrases. It is for the preacher to draw near, 
find the enigmatic passages, and proceed to their 
systematic unfolding and orderly application. In 
building his plan the preacher keeps his eye on his 
church. When a minister acts off-hand, without pre- 
meditation, he may forget to act like a Christian; 
but when he sits down and calmly forecasts the year, 
he is certain, unless he be a son of perdition, to look 
not only on his own things but also on the things 
of others. Planning for his people reduces the self- 
ishness of the preacher's heart. Paul was a father, 
a mother, and a brother to his converts. He was 
always anticipating their wants, making some new 
provision for their souls. 

For the sake of himself and his people every 
minister ought to have a church year. If he is not 
the servant of a communion which supplies him 
with a schedule ready made, let him make one for 



250 BUILDING THE PLAN 

himself. He can make a better one, possibly, 
than can any ecclesiastical council, however august. 
The unanswerable objection against all calendars 
devised for the use of Christian bodies is that they 
are too stiff. Not enough room is allowed for the 
free play of the life of the individual churches. 
Wide liberty is needed in the planning of public 
worship, and great flexibility is desirable in the 
framework of the plan. The church of God exists 
in different zones, and therefore in different cli- 
mates; and consequently the almanac is not a safe 
guide-book for the church in the work of planning 
its worship. Races differ greatly in temperament 
and culture, communities differ widely in tradition 
and social custom. To try to force all churches into 
a common temporal schedule irritates and fetters. 
The church that uses in all its congregations a table 
of Scripture readings made out by men who lived 
three hundred years ago needlessly hampers its min- 
isters in the doing of their work. The appointed 
lesson for the day is often inappropriate, either 
because of the character of the congregation, or the 
season of the year, or the overshadowing of some 
great and recent event which calls for Scripture of a 
different tone. To have the same theme treated in 
all churches on the same day is striving after a uni- 



BUILDING THE PLAN 25 1 

formity which is not worth what it costs. The 
interests of the local congregation should be jeal- 
ously safeguarded, and every pastor ought to be 
granted large freedom in shaping the worship to the 
particular requirements of his own parish. For 
instance, the descent of the Holy Spirit is an event 
which, along with the birth of Jesus and his resur- 
rection, ought to be commemorated every year, but 
there is no compelling reason why the coming of the 
Spirit should be celebrated only on the seventh 
Sunday after Easter. For Easter is itself a movable 
festival, it being impossible to hold fast to the 
precise anniversary day of Jesus' rising from the 
tomb. The dates in the almanac are such formal 
and flimsy things that there is no necessity for bind- 
ing to any one of them inseparably any one of the 
great events in the life of our Lord. If the larger 
part of a minister's congregation do not remain in 
the city seven weeks after Easter, why should he 
not preach his Pentecostal sermon on some earlier 
Sunday? To keep the correct sequence of the 
events is desirable, but to observe the precise day is 
not important. 

Several centuries ago the non-conformist bodies 
of Great Britain threw away the traditional 
ecclesiastical year, and for reason. The church 



252 BUILDING THE PLAN 

calendar had become a part of the yoke which 
it was impossible longer to bear. It was 
freighted with associations which were disturbing 
to many consciences and hearts. The number of 
festivals and fasts, of vigils and feasts, of bishops, 
martyrs, confessors, and saints to be commemorated, 
had been so multiplied that the church calendar 
had become a burden and scandal.. But the idea 
which lies at the root of the church year is a sound 
one, and there is no reason why all ministers, no 
matter what their ecclesiastical connections, should 
not make use of it. The root idea is that the funda- 
mental facts and truths of the Christian religion 
shall be commemorated at stated times every year. 
Such an annual commemoration has many things to 
commend it. It is helpful to the minister in that it 
keeps him from wandering away from the things 
which he is ordained to proclaim. It safeguards the 
church against the neglect of vital Christian doctrine. 
It fosters the natural growth of the spiritual life. 
If a minister marks upon his calendar at the begin- 
ning of the year the cardinal events in the life of 
Jesus, and the foundation doctrines of the Christian 
faith, he will save himself from a variety which is 
distracting, and from a monotony which is benumb- 
ing, and his people from that ignorance of evangelic 



BUILDING THE PLAN 253 

truth which lies like a blight upon so many congre- 
gations. There are certain themes of such moment 
to the soul that the preacher should deal with them 
every year. The sovereignty of God, the love 
of God, the birth and death and resurrection and 
character of Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit, 
the Great Commandment, the New Commandment, 
and the Golden Rule, faith and hope and love, 
prayer, Bible study, and self-sacrificing service, 
the guilt and penalty of sin, the call to repentance, 
the offer of forgiveness, civic duty, international 
peace, missions at home and abroad, the commun- 
ion of saints, and the life eternal, — surely no year 
would be complete with any of these sovereign 
themes omitted. They are themes which never 
grow old. They can never be exhausted. They 
are springs at which our fathers drank, and the last 
generation which shall live upon this earth will find 
refreshment in them. There are at least twenty 
themes on which a minister ought to preach every 
year. They are the old things which he is to bring 
out of his treasury again and again, giving them each 
year a different body, and pouring into them each 
year a fresh passion which will make them all new. 
Still other sermons can be decided on before the 
year opens. These will be upon themes which were 



254 BUILDING THE PLAN 

not touched upon last year and which need not be 
repeated in the year which is to follow. Truth is a 
vast country, and there is no reason why a preacher 
should settle down in one small corner of it. It 
should be his ambition each succeeding year to con- 
duct his hearers into at least one new region of the 
Scriptures, in which the scenery is somewhat un- 
familiar, and where the flowers and fruits expand 
one's conception of the lovely and luscious things 
which grow in the garden of the Lord. Many of 
these sermons can be coordinated. They can be 
organized into groups or courses. Sermons can be 
trained to help one another. They are not Christian 
sermons if they recognize no neighbors and confess 
no duties. They ought to march like soldiers en- 
listed for a great campaign. The sermons which 
come late ought to support the sermons which came 
early, and carry onward the work which they began. 
There ought to be a spiritual unity running through 
the year, and one increasing purpose. What these 
sermons ought to be, the preacher cannot tell until 
he has made a careful study of the spiritual condition 
of his church. What does it lack? Faith, cheer- 
fulness, hopefulness, patience, aggressiveness, rever- 
ence, love? Whatever it lacks the sermons ought 
to supply. A preacher ought to be as wise as a 



BUILDING THE PLAN 255 

farmer. A farmer decides what crops he wants, 
and selects his seeds accordingly. He knows he 
will reap what he sows. The preacher has the 
advantage of the farmer in that the preacher can 
not only select his seeds, but he can also control the 
weather. He can determine the quantity of the sun 
and the dew. He can fix the sequence of the seasons. 
If he does not get the fruit he desires, it is because 
he does not understand the creation and manage- 
ment of spiritual meteorological conditions. 

The skilled preacher ever works to make an im- 
pression. Deep impressions are made by concen- 
trating forces upon definite points. If sermons are 
entirely disconnected, and if one sermon does not 
care what sermon preceded it, or what sermon is 
going to follow, the best results are impossible. One 
reason why the noises of the street weary us is 
because there is no unity running through them. 
They are disconnected and therefore discordant. 
The tones of a symphony soothe and charm because 
in the variety of tones there lives a unity. By con- 
centration the composer produces a mighty effect. 
The sermons of a year ought to be a symphony. 
A few dominant notes should be carried through all 
the music of the year, other notes being held in sub- 
ordination, and yet even these subordinate parts 



256 BUILDING THE PLAN 

not being neglected, but organized and compelled 
to contribute to the harmonious whole. The archi- 
tectonic genius of a man comes out in building his 
course of instruction for a year. 

It is of great advantage to a preacher to carry in 
his eye a score of dates on which sermons on particu- 
lar themes are to fall due. By fixing the dates long 
in advance and compelling the mind to fall in with 
the predetermined schedule, the minister gains self- 
mastery, and escapes from the intolerable bondage 
of an intellect dependent on moods. It is a great 
thing to be delivered from the crotchets of a reluctant 
and recalcitrant mind. After a while the mind comes 
to like this orderly procedure, and goes to work 
with enthusiasm when the appointed hour strikes. 
Men who carry sermon themes long in their mind are 
always surprised by the ease with which the sermons, 
when called for, come forth. The mind has queer 
ways of working below consciousness, and a theme 
once given to it is probably unfolding day after day, 
although we ourselves are unconscious of its growth. 
One never knows what is going to happen when he 
puts a truth to soak in the juices of the mind. The 
mind is a capacious receptacle and one can put 
twenty themes into it as well as one, and all the 
twenty will have room in which to develop. Put 



BUILDING THE PLAN 257 

twenty subjects into the mind at the beginning of 
the year, and no matter what book you open, sen- 
tences will fly out of the book, and light on one or an- 
other member of this group of themes, just as bees 
when let loose in a field light on the flower which con- 
tains the nectar which they most relish. Or, to 
change the figure, build your arbor at the beginning 
of the year, set out your vines, and they will grow 
day and night, you know not how, for God will 
nourish them in ways known only to himself, and 
you will have in every season abundant fruit for the 
nourishment of your people. 

It is desirable that the Scripture lessons for the 
service of public worship should also be planned. 
Their selection certainly ought not to be left to acci- 
dent or caprice. The man who reads to his people 
the first chapter that happens to occur to him, is 
related to the man who preaches a sermon on the 
first text on which his eye happens to alight. They 
are both brothers of the primitive medicine man. 
Luck has no place in the Christian pulpit. Every- 
thing should be done decently and in order, nothing 
at random or haphazard. The public reading of the 
Scriptures is a part of the educational system of the 
Christian church, and the work ought to be carried 
on with premeditation and a clear-eyed, comprehen- 



258 BUILDING THE PLAN 

sive purpose. If a minister follows his own inclina- 
tions, he is likely to read and reread his favorite 
chapters. If he always reads the chapter which 
chances to contain his text, he will deprive his people 
of many chapters which deserve a place in the wor- 
ship of the church. There was a book of Scripture 
which was lost once by the clergymen of the Jewish 
church, and, strange to say, it was lost in the temple. 
In many a Christian church more than one book of 
the Bible is lost. Its message is never heard in 
public worship. Even ministers who entertain ex- 
alted theories of inspiration sometimes have a cu- 
rious fashion of treating whole books of Holy Writ 
as though they were books of straw. They do not 
ostracize these books intentionally, but drop them 
because there is no method in their church adminis- 
tration. Unless a preacher plans to travel sys- 
tematically through the Bible in the worship of the 
church, he will unconsciously come back repeatedly 
to a few chapters which are congenial because they 
are familiar. It is unwise for a man to make his own 
taste dictator in deciding what Scriptures shall be 
read. Many men have many minds and many needs 
and many tastes, and the Bible is a myriad-sided book 
intended for a myriad-sided humanity. Because a 
Bible book does not appeal to the preacher is no 



BUILDING THE PLAN 259 

sufficient reason for exiling it from the Christian 
pulpit. Its lack of appeal may be due to the fact 
that the preacher has outgrown it, or that he has 
not yet grown up to it. Saints in the pew, maturer 
than he is, might feed upon it with thanksgiving, or 
immature disciples might find in it the simple food 
which children need. The preacher who ignores 
the Old Testament in his Scripture reading because 
the New Testament is higher, robs and wrongs his 
people. The Old Testament was the only Bible of 
our Lord. It is the book which the apostles kept 
open before them while they preached. It is the 
book which passed like iron into the blood of the 
Puritans, making them strong to overthrow ancient 
tyrannies and establish the world on a new founda- 
tion. There is ethical instruction in the Old Testa- 
ment which will never be outgrown. In the regenera- 
tion of modern society and the creation of a new world 
order, the prophets of Israel have a great role to play. 
There is no book in the Bible which the modern 
church does not need. Many chapters, to be sure, 
deal with things transitory and local, and have no 
claim upon the modern church in her worship or life, 
but the Bible as a whole, and not the Bible in frag- 
ments or fractions, is a book to be given to the people. 
The planning of Scripture readings brings blessings 



260 BUILDING THE PLAN 

to the preacher. It carries him into regions into 
which, if left to his own impulses, he might never go. 
Even in Bible regions which seem to be nothing but 
rock and sand, he will find precious material for the 
building of the church. The steady, progressive 
movement of pastor and people across the entire 
Bible world introduces a variety into the Sunday 
service which breaks the monotony of the pulpit 
ministrations. If the preacher is a narrow man, 
lacking in versatility and range, and preaches ser- 
mons of but a single type, a relief is given to the 
service by introducing into it the varied voices of a 
great company of men who by divers portions and in 
divers manners proclaim the character and will of 
God. Every preacher, no matter how talented, 
needs all available weapons for the slaying of that 
arch enemy of all preachers — Monotony. Various 
lectionaries — tables of Bible lessons — have been pre- 
pared by various branches of the Christian church, 
but none of them is, in my judgment, satisfactory. 
Why should not the preacher make his own? Let 
him go carefully through the Bible, culling out the 
chapters which contain either milk or meat for the 
present generation, and let these selected passages 
be arranged in an ordered sequence, which can be 
travelled through in at least five years. The building 



BUILDING THE PLAN 26 1 

of this lectionary is one of the first pieces of construc- 
tive work to which the young preacher may wisely 
devote not a few of his leisure hours. 

If a minister plans his Scripture lessons for five 
years, why not other things ? We are never at our 
best unless we are working for results too great to be 
attained in a single year. The lines of action must 
be long if the pulse is to be even, and the endeavor 
steady. A long pastorate is to be craved and planned 
for. A minister on taking charge of a parish ought 
to lay out his work on the supposition that he will 
remain where he is at least five years. He may, it is 
true, not remain a year. Any one of many conceiv- 
able combinations of circumstances may render an 
extended pastorate inadvisable or impossible, but no 
man should allow contingencies to dictate the plan- 
ning of his life. In a world like this all things are pos- 
sible. The preacher may die next year, next month, 
next week, to-night, but no sensible man allows pos- 
sibilities a chief place in determining what he is 
going to aim to do. Some things must be assumed, 
and one of them is that the man is going to live and 
that his pastorate will not be short. A minister 
who expects to die next week cannot do his best work, 
neither can a man who expects to change his parish 
next year. If with the eye of faith he sees the years 



262 BUILDING THE PLAN 

stretching out before him, he can work with a clearer 
eye and grip the world with a steadier hand. He will 
possess that which is indispensable to a successful 
teacher, — a quiet heart. Men who are restless and 
wavering, always anticipating a change, never succeed 
as preachers. The feeling of unsettledness burns 
like a fever in the blood, consuming the vital ele- 
ments of strength. With a long pastorate in his eye 
a minister is less likely to do shoddy work. He will 
not cultivate those mushroom growths which flourish 
and wilt like Jonah's gourd. The parish will not be 
made feverish by being placed under high pressure 
methods. The new pastor will not go at things furi- 
ously, as some young men do, striking a pace which 
it is impossible for any mortal to keep up, but he will 
swing into a steady gait which can be maintained 
through the years. The difficult thing in the min- 
istry is not to fly for a spell like an eagle, or to run 
for a season like a race horse, but to walk a long time 
and not faint. 

With five possible years before him a man has 
encouragement to formulate a plan. Men do not lay 
long plans who expect to leave their church at 
the end of a few months. It is not human nature to 
set out trees whose fruit one never expects to eat, to 
make sacrifices for a cause whose prosperity one never 



BUILDING THE PLAN 263 

expects to see, to prepare for triumphs which one has 
no hope of enjoying. A man who expects a short 
pastorate has many inducements to do surface work. 
He is tempted to do only those things which make a 
show. The deep and difficult things will be passed 
by. Such a man dwarfs himself and blights the 
parish. If the preacher feels that he is only a tran- 
sient guest in the ecclesiastical inn, waiting for the 
next train to carry him to a more commodious hotel, 
all his people will know it and no one will have 
heart to do the things which cost blood. Fidgety 
men ought never to go into the ministry. Nomads 
are out of place in the realm of pastoral service. 
Men who become the pastor of a church simply to 
use its pulpit as a stepping-stone to something 
higher, ought to be outlawed by all churches. When 
a minister consents to become the pastor of a church 
let him settle down, resolved never to leave it until 
it is made clear that his work there has been carried 
to such a point that he can in justice to the great 
church of God pass on to a field which calls for still 
harder service. 

A man can build great plans if he has several years 
over which to stretch them. He can lay out courses 
of study for his own intellectual development, and 
by his plan he will save himself from squandering his 



264 BUILDING THE PLAN 

time on the miscellaneous books which the pub- 
lishers thrust on him, or which his parishioners ask 
him to read. Many a minister has been wrecked by 
reading without purpose and method. He had no 
plan of his own, and so he was at the mercy of every 
one who volunteered a suggestion. He can also plan 
his studies in theology, history, biography, and 
poetry, four branches indispensable to a man who 
wishes to be a master-teacher of men. Certain sub- 
jects will be assigned to each of the years, and certain 
volumes will be set apart for each of the months, 
and no sort of conspiracy on the part of men or 
devils will be allowed to break down the minister's 
determination to pursue the prearranged course to its 
end. Desultory reading and spasmodic study have 
slain their thousands. A man who forms a clean-cut 
plan and clings to it heroically through the opposi- 
tions of the years, is a man who advances in wisdom 
and stature, and in favor with God and men. 

Even the sermons can be planned for a period of 
five years — not all of them, but those which deal with 
truths which come up every year for fresh treatment. 
A man can plan five sermons on the doctrine of God, 
or the character of Jesus, or the work of the Holy 
Spirit, or the Christian church, or the Life Eternal, 
or Missionary Work and Workers, each sermon ap- 



BUILDING THE PLAN 265 

proaching the subject by a different route, and view- 
ing it from a different standpoint. Unless a preacher 
plans his annually recurring sermons, he will find 
himself saying the same things every year, and his 
people, wondering why the sermons are so tedious, 
will make no progress in their apprehension of these 
cardinal themes. By cutting a great truth into sec- 
tions, and assigning one section to each year, the 
preacher will at the end of a term of years have the 
joy of knowing that he himself has made progress 
in the mastery of truth, and that his people are in 
possession of a wider and wealthier kingdom. 

After a minister has served an apprenticeship in 
laying five-year plans, he may venture upon the work 
of planning for ten years. Having learned how to 
map out the work of ten years, he will be ready to 
plan the remainder of his life. He cannot plan it in 
detail, but the outlines can be sketched, and these can 
be filled in as the needed light is furnished. No 
man's plan can be carried out entirely as he framed 
it, for we are under the government of a God who 
also makes plans, and when our plans conflict with 
His plans, it is our plans which are broken. But, 
using the light we have, we should project long 
courses of action, and when another girds us and we 
are carried whither we would not go, it is our con- 



266 BUILDING THE PLAN 

solation to know we are in the hands of One who 
plans only for our good. Paul planned to go into 
Bithynia, but his plan was shattered. He purposed 
to enter a province, and God gave him a continent. 
While we are weeping over our failure to enter Bi- 
thynia, we are in fact on our way to Troas, where a 
new vision awaits us, and larger fields are to be opened 
to us by the generosity of the incomprehensible, 
wonder-working God. 

It is a good thing for a preacher to look often down 
the years which slope toward the sunset, and see him- 
self as he would like' himself to be at the end of the 
day. It is good also to behold in a dream the 
Church of God rising in the distance, glorious with 
the proportions and graces which it ought to have, 
if all the builders do their duty. Occasionally one 
should picture himself in that bright world where, 
the fires of judgment having done their work, it shall 
be made evident how much of the material which 
the preacher used was hay and wood and stubble. It 
is when the eyes are cleansed by the touch of the 
upper worlds that we see the emptiness of reputation, 
the hollowness of cheap successes, and realize the 
transitoriness of the pride of place and the pomp of 
learning. In our Patmos hours it is revealed to us 
that it is not our predecessors toward whom our 



BUILDING THE PLAN 267 

eyes should most frequently be turned, but toward 
our successors, the men who are to labor after we are 
in our graves. It is not for us to strive to equal or 
surpass the men who have gone before us, but so to 
work as to make it easier for the men who come af- 
ter us to bring the church to a new perfection. We 
stand in the line of a great succession, and to so link 
ourselves to the men behind, and the men before, as 
to enable God to do through us the work for which 
we were created — this is victory. 

The first great preacher had but one ambition, to 
apprehend that for which also he was apprehended 
by Christ Jesus. Can any heart soar to a loftier 
height? Paul planned his work. He left nothing 
to caprice. He did not run uncertainly. He did 
not fight as one who beats the air. He had a burn- 
ing purpose and a shining goal, and he pressed on 
steadily toward the mark. It is a thrilling shout of 
victory, his exultant cry, " I have finished the course." 

Jesus of Nazareth planned his work. In com- 
munion with his Father he fashioned his course pa- 
tiently through the years. He had a cup to drink, 
and a baptism to be baptized with, and he was 
straitened until it was accomplished. There is a rap- 
ture in his confession to his Father, "I have accom- 
plished the work which thou hast given me to do." 



268 BUILDING THE PLAN 

His joy on earth reached its climax in the excla- 
mation of his latest hour, "It is finished !" When 
a man gives himself to the work of preaching, hold- 
ing back nothing, giving all, when he plans his life 
and work with an eye single to God's glory, ever aim- 
ing to bring his plan into deepening harmony with 
the plan of Heaven, he becomes a successor of the 
apostles, and enters into the joy of his Lord. 



LECTURE VIII 
THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

Two queries have no doubt arisen in many an 
alert mind while we have been walking together along 
the way : Why has there been no lecture on the 
"Building of the Sermon"? and why has the 
" Building of the Builder" been relegated to the 
closing hour? In all building operations does not 
the Builder come first? Does not the plan pro- 
ceed from him? Does not the edifice depend on 
him ? Is he not the first link in the chain, the foun- 
tain from which all else proceeds ? Why not build 
the preacher, and then proceed to build the church ? 

The preacher comes last in this course of lectures, 
because in the work of building he comes first. It 
is a paradox of Christianity that those who are first 
are often last. He who would find himself must 
lose himself, and only to him who makes himself of 
no reputation and lays down his life, is the promise 
given. It was the Master's way to set men, first 
of all, not face to face with themselves, but face to 
face with their task, and it was by the patient doing 
of their task that they were to save their souls. 

271 



272 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

Many things he was wont to tell them about the im- 
portance and difficulty of the work to which he had 
called them, and few things apparently did he say 
about their own salvation. They were to seek first 
of all the Kingdom of God, to build a brotherhood 
in which the love of God should be controlling and by 
which the will of God should get itself done on earth, 
and, doing this, they would find all necessary things 
being added. The apostles were men, and there- 
fore interested in their own personal advancement, 
but whenever they attempted to induce Jesus to 
speak of their own dignities and promotions, he began 
to talk again about their work. Even up to the edge 
of the ascension cloud they carried their discussions 
of rank and dominion, but to the end the only assur- 
ance which was given to them was that they should 
have sufficient strength with which to do their work. 
He left them face to face with a church that was to 
be built, and it was in the building of this church that 
they were to grow into that fulness of stature which 
is appointed for the sons of God. 

Many of the tragedies of the Christian ministry 
are caused by the minister getting into the wrong 
place. Everything seems to conspire to push him 
to the front. His own native inclinations and am- 
bitions, the love of place, the love of praise, and the 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 273 

love of power, render the first place attractive, and 
all the kingdoms of the world outside of him are 
in league with the world inside of him, to keep the 
eyes of the minister upon himself. When he comes 
to the seminary, he is taken in charge by a group of 
experts whose business it is to call his attention to 
himself. One man lays hold upon his voice, and 
asks him to study it, to note its intonations, inflec- 
tions, cadences, to observe his gestures and keep track 
of them. Another selects his diction, and requests 
him to criticise it, to keep his eye on his ad- 
jectives, his relative pronouns, and the structure of 
his sentences. Another takes his sermons and bids 
him take them to pieces and study each separate 
part, inspecting it under the microscope of the crit- 
ical judgment. Another collects his doctrinal be- 
liefs, his conceptions of God and man, the Scriptures 
and the Sacraments, and rivets his gaze upon them, 
requesting him to sit in judgment on them, to pry 
into their origin, to analyze them and to find reasons 
for them. It may be that some one will even dig up 
the roots of his "call to the ministry." All young 
men come out of the seminary more or less intro- 
spective and self-conscious. It is inevitable. 

The process begun in the seminary is carried on 
by the parish. A minister's task drags him to the 



274 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

front. He cannot do his work in a corner. He 
must have the uppermost room. At every feast he 
is at the head of the table. He is the observed of all 
observers. He must be not only seen but heard. He 
must always be speaking or praying or reading. He 
cannot help displaying his gifts. This exhibition of 
himself invites criticism. If he is handsome, he will 
overhear some one remarking it. If he has a good 
voice, many will tell him so. If his style is effective, 
the compliments will be abundant. If his success is 
conspicuous, the silver bugles will blow a musical 
blast across the town. His name will be on many 
lips, and the light of many rejoicing eyes will illumine 
his triumphant way. A man cannot hear the band 
playing in his honor without thinking of himself. 
No matter how humble, he is likely to become self- 
conscious in the major key. The building of himself 
is suggested to him, not by demons but by the saints, 
and the building of the church, against his wish, 
and it may be without his notice, gradually recedes. 
Or if his voice is harsh and his gestures are awkward, 
if his style is dull and his ideas are thin, the empty 
pews will speak to him, and now and then there will 
be wafted to him on a chilling breeze a whisper which 
will cut. He will become self-conscious in the minor 
key. This last state is worse than the first. A man 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 275 

conscious of what he has is stronger than a man con- 
scious of what he lacks. Adulation and disparage- 
ment are both deadly. Conceit and despondency 
are twin enemies of pulpit power. Both of them are 
the children of self-consciousness. A minister is un- 
done whose eyes are fixed on himself. Only by look- 
ing away from himself is it possible for him to be 
saved. Hence in the training of preachers the 
first glance should be not inward, but outward. 
Paul, according to an early tradition, began his min- 
isterial career with the question, "Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do?" It is because of his critical 
and immeasurable importance that the preacher in 
these lectures has been kept in the background. For 
his own sake his eyes have been turned away from 
himself. The building of the preacher goes forward 
during the building of the church. 

Certainly no one would claim that the well-being of 
the preacher is a negligible factor in the complex prob- 
lem of church building, for here as almost nowhere 
else, is it incontestably and everlastingly true, "Get 
your man and all is got." But how to get the man, 
that is the question. Shall we build him in a vac- 
uum, detached from the world in which he is to work, 
adding virtue to virtue and grace to grace, until at 
last, full statured, it is announced to him what he 



276 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

is to do? Or shall we seek him in the church, keeping 
him under the church ideal, exposing him to church 
atmospheres and forces, allowing the Christian 
brotherhood to fashion him after the pattern which 
the Master gave, and ministering to him through 
the bonds of fellowship until he becomes a workman 
of whom no one need be ashamed ? 

Humanly speaking, everything depends upon the 
minister. Music cannot save a church, nor the 
Bible, nor the sacraments, nor pulpit discourses. 
Worship dies unless it is kept alive by a living 
man. Out of the personality of the preacher 
flow, as Jesus said, the refreshing streams. Most 
Christian congregations know this. They are 
caring less and less for scholastic attainments, 
academic degrees and titles, denominational affilia- 
tions, even creedal loyalties — what they want is a 
man. Things that men pick up in the schools have 
their value, but they can never take the place 
of the one thing essential in a preacher — charac- 
ter. Two men go from the same seminary, in the 
same year, with the same education and the same 
creed. One succeeds from the beginning, and his 
successes increase with the seasons. The other fails 
from the start, and his entire career is a disappoint- 
ment. It is not a difference in rhetoric, ideas, or 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 277 

training, but a difference in men. They take their 
texts out of the same Bible, preach the same scheme 
of doctrinal truth, make use in general of the same 
ideas and illustrations, but they do not preach the 
same gospel, for the gospel is truth moulded and vivi- 
fied by the soul of the man who preaches it. A 
preacher makes an impression not simply by his words, 
but by his soul. When words do not penetrate, it 
is because there is a feeble man behind them. When 
ideas do not kindle, it is because there is no divine 
fire in the lips that speak them. Bullets may be of 
equal size and like material, but the distance to 
which they travel depends upon the gun. Sermons 
are bullets. How far they go does not depend upon 
the text or upon the structure of the sermon, but upon 
the texture of the manhood of the preacher. The 
building of the preacher becomes, then, a matter of 
tremendous moment to every one interested in the 
building of the church. We cannot afford to run the 
risk of spoiling him by allowing him to think of him- 
self first. 

The reason why no special lecture has been de- 
voted to the building of the sermon is because the sub- 
ject cannot be treated adequately in a single lec- 
ture. All the lectures have been dealing with that in- 
teresting and tantalizing theme. Not much has been 



278 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

said about the sermon, but everything has been said 
in the interest of the sermon. There has been scant 
attention to the technique of the sermon, but the 
soul of the sermon has been held steadily in view. 
There have been no suggestions as to texts, intro- 
ductions, arguments, climaxes, and perorations, be- 
cause these things are secondary, and do not reach 
the root of power in preaching. We have been deal- 
ing with things more fundamental. We have faced 
the aim of preaching, and peered into the things 
which make preaching worth while. We have con- 
sidered the kind of atmospheres in which sermons 
catch tire, and have surveyed the world of thought 
and feeling from which the streams of pulpit power 
proceed. Because one says nothing about the letter 
of the sermon, does he disparage it? God forbid. 
He exalts it if he uncovers the stupendous work 
which sermons are to accomplish. All that has been 
said is designed to help you in the work of preaching. 
Preaching is your highest business. Nothing can 
ever take its place. You are to be administrators, 
but administration will not fill the place of preaching. 
Unless you are preachers, you are not likely to have 
much to administer. You are to be organizers, but 
the organizing gift will never compensate for the lack 
of the gift of preaching. Men who cannot preach 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 279 

have ordinarily little to organize. When you see a 
man at the head of a large and living church, display- 
ing rare gifts of organization and administration, 
do not suppose that these are the gifts by which his 
church came into being, or which keep it glad and 
strong. He or some one else created it by preaching. 
Unless a man knows how to present truth in such a 
way as to get it into the blood of those who hear him, 
he need never hope for a living, growing, conquering 
church, no matter what other gifts he may be 
possessed of. Christian people desire of their pas- 
tors nothing so much as sermons which will vitalize 
and nourish them. They are always shamefaced if 
obliged to say, "Our pastor is a good man, but he 
cannot preach." Even faithful pastoral service 
will not reconcile a congregation to incompetency in 
the pulpit. In this the people are not unreasonable. 
They have a right to expect and demand that their 
pastor shall instruct and comfort and strengthen and 
guide them by his sermons. It is the fashion to-day 
in certain quarters to speak disparagingly of ser- 
mons. One would suppose, from the scornful intona- 
tions, that it is almost sacrilegious, if not disreputable, 
to go to church for the purpose of listening to a ser- 
mon. We are reminded that the purpose of church 
attendance is the worship of God, and that sermon 



280 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

hearing is a modern and secular pastime. All such 
talk is based on false assumptions. It is assumed 
that preaching is not worship, and that listening to 
a sermon is a less religious exercise than that of sing- 
ing hymns and saying prayers. Both assumptions 
are without foundation. The true preacher in the 
act of genuine preaching is worshipping the Almighty, 
offering to him a sacrifice more costly than any 
other which it is possible for him to offer in the house 
of God. If in praise he is loving God with his heart, 
and in parish work he is loving God with his might, 
then in the act of preaching he is loving God with his 
mind, which is also a part of the great command- 
ment. Indeed, in preaching he uses all his heart, and 
all his soul, and all his mind, and all his strength, as in 
no other act in all his life. In a sermon the preacher 
offers himself, soul and body, a living sacrifice unto 
God. Those who listen to the sermon with docile 
and attentive hearts, seeking to find God's voice in 
it, are also engaged in worship. If to worship is to 
reverence God, and to perform acts of homage and 
adoration, what higher reverence can be paid him 
than that offered by a congregation in the act of en- 
tering into a fuller apprehension of the meaning of a 
truth uttered by prophet, or apostle, or God's only 
Son, and unfolded by a man guided by the Holy 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 251 

Spirit ? The sermon is the climax of public worship. 
It summons to the throne of God a larger number 
of faculties than any other act of worship. It calls 
upon everything within us to bless God's holy name. 
The pastor of a church is preeminently a preacher. 
"Feed my sheep," so our Lord said to the leader of 
the twelve. It is a command which comes to all 
Christian pastors. " God did not send me to baptize, 
but to preach the gospel," so said the Master- 
builder, and let every man remember it, when he is 
tempted to shirk the arduous duties of a prophet 
and choose the easier occupations of a priest. The 
history of the nineteen Christian centuries confirms 
the wisdom of Paul's great declaration, that it has 
pleased God to save the world by the foolishness 
of preaching. Experience shows that when preach- 
ers cease to preach, a darkness falls upon the world. 
There are no golden ages in Christian history, save 
those made golden by tongues kindled by coals from 
off God's altar. The preacher holds the keys which 
unlock the gates of all earth's prisons. The whole 
world brightens when a man appears able to unfold in 
syllables of fire the unsearchable riches of Christ. 
Preaching has had a glorious past. Its future will 
be more glorious still. The printing-press will never 
supersede the human tongue. Books will never 



282 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

drive out the spoken word. So long as the heart is 
human, so long will it respond to a tongue full of 
grace and truth. Never has the world been so rich 
in printing-presses as now, and never have the 
churches been so clamorous for preachers. The call 
is loud, and it comes from every quarter. Any man 
who knows how to preach is certain of a hearing. 
There is no question which the authorities of our 
schools of theology ought to ask with greater fre- 
quency and earnestness than "How can we better 
train our students to become more effective, master- 
ful, triumphant preachers ? " No matter what else 
a seminary may do, it does not do the chief thing if 
it does not send into the churches well-equipped and 
able preachers. 

But what is it to preach, and how can one make 
himself a preacher? Here again we are thrown 
back on the basal fact, that the sermon depends on 
the man. The sermon is, indeed, the man. The 
man himself must be a sermon. Preaching is not 
an art in the sense in which sculpture, music, and 
painting are arts. It resembles these, but it tran- 
scends them all. The work of the artist can be 
divorced from his character. In preaching it is the 
character of the preacher which is the preacher's 
power. Preaching is not a trick which can be 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 283 

mastered some bright morning, or a secret which 
can be transmitted from one man to another for 
a consideration. There is a stupid fellow mentioned 
in the Book of the Acts, who supposed he could share 
in the apostles' power by the payment of a sum of 
money. Stupidity of that sort has not yet vanished 
from the earth. Even to-day there are men who 
think that the chief thing in preaching is an artful 
use of the voice, or a crafty combination of gestures, 
or a cunning carving of diction, or an expert jugglery 
of illustrations, or a dexterous manoeuvring of ideas, 
or a clever and impressive display of learning. In 
this view, preaching is a sort of magic, a sleight of 
hand or of tongue, an ingenious piece of legerdemain 
by which souls are mesmerized and the boundaries of 
God's kingdom extended. The sermon is a contriv- 
ance which can be wrought out by an adroit 
schemer, a strategem which can be laid by a long- 
headed intriguer, a device which can be created 
by an industrious artificer. Men who hold this 
view sometimes go to hear preachers preach in order 
to learn the secret of their power. They never 
find out. God hides certain things from the wise 
and prudent — and also from fools. The man who 
thinks that preaching is a trick of voice, or thought, 
or language, never learns how to preach. No men 



284 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

are so wearisome in the pulpit as the men who know 
they have good voices, and are evidently making 
an effort to let their hearers know it too. The best 
thing that a preacher can do with his voice is to 
hide it. The best voice for preaching is the voice 
that no one ever hears. Gestures which are striking 
make an impression the first few times, but if they 
keep on striking they give pain. Eloquence is good 
occasionally when it comes by the will of Heaven, 
but no congregation can endure eloquence every 
Sunday for five consecutive years. Manufactured 
eloquence is declamation, and declamation is not 
eloquence at all. It is a wooden imitation of celes- 
tial fire, and is a great weariness. A beautiful style, 
so beautiful that the rustling of the verbal finery 
drowns the music of the thought, is also a burden. 
When all the sentences roll out after the fashion of 
those of Macaulay or of Burke, men sigh for relief. 
The best pulpit style is the style that is not seen. 
Blessed is the preacher who succeeds in beating his 
style down into invisibility. Voice and language 
ought to be like the atmosphere, life-supporting 
but invisible. Illustrations are also a nuisance, un- 
less they grow up naturally like flowers along the 
path which the sermon takes. Expert illustrators 
grow irksome after the second year. Quotations 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 285 

are also gewgaws which entertain for a season, and 
then lose their charm. They never impress any but 
the unlettered, for all men who are acquainted with 
the world of books know where and how to get them. 
Stringing quotations is like stringing beads, it re- 
quires no intellect, and is hardly serious business for 
a full-grown man. It is only when the words of 
other men force themselves by sheer strength of 
undeniable superiority into the company of your 
sentences, and bend themselves whole-heartedly to 
the task of carrying on your thought, that they 
can be considered other than impertinent and mis- 
chievous interlopers. As for ideas, a preacher can 
have too many of them. Great thoughts are op- 
pressive if too abundant. It is not thoughts but 
thought that a congregation wants, and you can- 
not have thought without a thinker. The ideal 
preacher is not a retailer of beautiful thoughts, but 
a man who can bring to the discussion of every 
moral and spiritual question the illumination of a 
sane and discriminating mind. Learning is also out 
of place in the pulpit. Learned sermons are the 
easiest of all to write, and the most fatiguing to those 
who hear them. Any one can write a learned 
sermon who is alone with an encyclopedia for 
half a dozen hours. Many a church has had its 



286 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

life crushed out by the learning of its pastor. All 
these things — voice, gesture, rhetoric, illustrations, 
quotations, ideas, learning — have a certain value, 
but they are at best superficialities, and all of 
them, unless backed up by something better, soon 
grow thin and tame. After a little time artificial 
elocution becomes unbearable, rhetorical display 
unendurable, excessive illustration insufferable, the 
exploitation of novel or abstract ideas intolerable. 
Nothing wears but manhood. To remain ten or 
twenty years in the same parish, a preacher must be 
very simple and very true. Goodness never grows 
stale. Love never becomes monotonous. An in- 
dustrious man in good health with disciplined pow- 
ers, whose life is hid with Christ in God, can speak 
year after year to the same people with the dew of 
the morning always on his message. Preaching 
is primarily a matter of manhood. The sermon 
depends on the mass of the man. His character 
must be massive, or he cannot do the work. One 
sometimes hears an expression which tells much. 
"He is not big enough man for the place." Is 
he not educated? Yes. Is he not clever? 
Very. Bright? Exceedingly. Brilliant? Often. 
And yet not big enough for the place! The 
world makes a distinction between a man 



THE BUILDING OP THE BUILDER 287 

and his gifts. The Church of God must have the 
man. The variety and nature of his talents come 
up for consideration later. A sermon is not a 
manufactured product, but a spiritual creation. It 
is not a machine which a man can construct in his 
sermonic shop, and set it running in the pulpit like 
the electric toys which one sees sometimes on 
the corner of the city street. A sermon is an exha- 
lation, a spiritual vapor emerging from the oceanic 
depths of the preacher's soul. It is an emana- 
tion, an efflux, an effluence flowing from an interior 
fountain hidden in the depths of personality. 
It is an efflorescence, an outflowering of beautiful 
things whose home is in the blood. It is a per- 
fume from spiritual roses blossoming in the garden of 
the heart. It is fruit growing on the tree of a man's 
life. " A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nei- 
ther can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." 
Make the tree good. A sermon is the life-blood of a 
Christian spirit. Apreacher dies in the act of preach- 
ing. He lays down his life for his brethren. He 
saves others, himself he cannot save. The pulpit is 
a Golgotha in which the preacher gives his life for 
the life of the world. Preaching is a great work. 
To do it as God wants it done, the preacher must 
be a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. 



288 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

And now let me speak, not by way of command- 
ment, but by way of counsel; not as presenting a 
revelation, but only my judgment. It is not good, 
it seems to me, to resort to various nostrums which 
have been prepared for the preacher's uses, or to 
lean too heavily upon sundry mechanical devices 
which have been created for the purpose of help- 
ing the minister on his way. Crutches are good for 
cripples, and tonics are good for invalids, but young 
men starting on their work in the ministry ought to 
walk on their own feet, uncoddled. Books of illus- 
trations are good books — to keep away from. 
They have no place on the shelves of a man who 
wants to grow. Let the preacher get his own 
illustrations. If he has eyes and ears they will 
come to him in crowds — crying like free children 
of God : "Here we are, use us." The importance 
of illustration in the pulpit has been vastly overes- 
timated, and many a preacher has degenerated into 
a relator of anecdotes and repeater of stale stories. 
If a man has anything worth illustrating, he will 
have no difficulty in rinding illustrations, but if 
his chief ambition is to collect images, likenesses, and 
pictures, he is likely to remain a child in intellect all 
his life. There is no joy in the ministry, if life 
is reduced to a haggard hunt after new and striking 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 289 

illustrations. The preacher who cries out in dis- 
may : " Wherewithal shall my sermon be pictorially 
clothed?" should read again the exhortation: 
"Seek first the Kingdom," with its accompanying 
promise that to those who do this, all things needful 
will be added. Books of "Great Thoughts" are 
also a delusion. No man can entertain ten thou- 
sand great thoughts, or even one thousand. They 
simply encumber and suffocate the mind. The 
thoughts which a congregation needs are not numer- 
ous, and if too many are administered at any one 
time the mind is surfeited and sinks into a stupor. 
The preacher should also beware of note-books, 
scrap-books, envelopes for clippings, cases of boxes 
and drawers for the storing away of sermonic 
material. All such devices have their legitimate 
place, but they can easily become a source of peril. 
They take a deal of time, and a man may form the 
habit of using his scissors when he ought to be using 
his head. It is possible to have a hundred huge 
envelopes bulging with sermonic treasures, while the 
mind is distressingly spindling and lean. It is far 
more important to keep the heart full than to have 
a lot of things laid away in drawers. Many a man 
has hewed out for himself at infinite pains cisterns 
which cannot hold the kind of water for which 



290 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

humanity is thirsting. Facts and figures, statistics 
and records, odds and ends of information, — this is 
not the material on which souls feed and grow. A 
man should get his sermons not out of a scrap-book 
but out of himself. Like the spider, he should 
weave his web out of his own substance. 

It is not well to cultivate the homiletic habit, the 
habit of demanding a pound of sermonic flesh from 
every Antonio you chance to meet. This habit will 
grow upon you in spite of all that you can do, and 
may possibly drown you along with thousands of 
others in the pool of professionalism. One ought 
not to be thinking shop all the time. A man who 
is always working for sermons is as foolish as the 
man who is always working for money. Both men 
may say that they are seeking wealth to be used for 
the good of others, but it is not healthful to do one 
thing — no matter what it is — all the time. A 
preacher ought to be able to look upon a landscape 
without screwing illustrations out of it, or enjoy 
a sail upon the Rhine without working the castles 
then and there into a course of next winter's ser- 
mons, or play with children without squeezing from 
them suggestions which may be put to use in the 
prayer-meeting. The homiletic habit is a leech. 
It sucks the blood, and leaves the man anaemic. 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 29 1 

Landscapes and historic ruins and children, and 
all other lovely things, are to be enjoyed. They 
are themselves their own excuse for being, and the 
preacher should revel in them with no thought of 
ulterior ends. We wrong a book when we read it 
simply for things which we can use. It is desecra- 
tion of a poem to read it for fine phrases with which 
to deck a sermon, and we wrong the masterpiece of 
an historian when we follow him only for an illustra- 
tion with which to brighten up an argument. It is 
only when we gloriously forget ourselves — as Mrs. 
Browning has reminded us — and plunge headlong 
into the depths of the author's thought, that we 
get out of a book the best thing which the book has 
to give. In listening to great men speak, the 
preacher ought to forget that he too is a speaker. 
He ought not to fix his gaze on the speaker's voice, 
his gestures, or his adjectives. He ought not to at- 
tempt to put into his note-book the things which the 
speaker says. All that he can get into his note-book 
is a few fine phrases, a dozen noble sentiments or 
ideas. But what are these compared with the great 
things which the hearer might be receiving ! The 
things most precious are subtle things which cannot 
be caught on the end of a pencil — disinthralment, 
enchantment, exaltation, the air of a great height. 



292 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

While the writer is jotting down a few notions and 
phrases, he is losing much of the glow of the speaker's 
soul. It is the flash of the spirit and not the words 
of the lips which is the best thing which a great 
man has to give. Catch that and you have an im- 
perishable possession. To feel upon one's life the 
hot breath of a great heart, to drink into one's being 
the life of a great soul in one of its great moments, 
is a privilege which does not come often and which 
should be valued above rubies and fine gold. We 
are never the same after we have once entered into 
the feeling of a man genuinely great, after we have 
been fused by the fire of his burning spirit. Do not 
sit aloof as a critic, noting in cold blood trifling 
incidents of movement and accidents of manner; 
get near him, go with him, think with him, feel with 
him, live with him. Let him expand you, exalt 
you, cleanse you. Go with him. He sees some- 
thing. He is following a gleam. Try to see what 
he sees. A gleam which the eye once catches never 
fades. Phrases fade out of the memory, ideas 
lose their distinctness of form, but a light that has 
once shone into the soul becomes a part of the soul's 
life forever. Do not be a critic whenever you can 
be something better. A critic even at his best is 
only a second-rate man. The men of the highest 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 293 

rank are creators. It is the creators who make 
the world. Preachers are called to be creators. 
They are to create new atmospheres, new charac- 
ters, new worlds. They should develop, therefore, 
their creative faculties, the imagination and all the 
powers by which the soul admires and hopes and 
loves. Receptivity, impressionability, spiritual sen- 
sitiveness, sympathy, responsiveness, the genius for 
merging the soul in the souls of others — these are 
the powers which the preacher needs. The critic 
always thinks that he goes deep, but he never goes 
deep enough to find the secret of life. We cannot 
go deep by our critical faculty. The critical faculty 
is an anatomist, and an anatomist goes only deep 
enough to find bones. With the scalpel one can 
reach the skeleton, but never the source and home 
of life. You cannot find a speaker's power by dis- 
section. You may analyze his arguments, pick to 
pieces his phrases, catalogue his pictures, but these 
are only bones. You find his life only when your 
soul goes out to meet him. Drink at the fountain 
of his life, eat his flesh, drink his blood, that you 
also may live. What this world needs is not a 
fuller knowledge of bones, but a more abundant 
measure of vitality. 

It is possible to work too long upon a sermon. 



294 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

The sermon may become an idol, before which the 
preacher prostrates his powers in worship. This 
is the temptation that besets men who have the 
artistic temperament, and who have an eye for 
delicate shadings and an ear for the finer melodies 
of speech. Before the preacher is aware of it, he 
has forgotten his congregation, and is thinking 
exclusively of the masterpiece which is to be ex- 
hibited in the church salon next Sunday morning. 
This is a sin which, when it is finished, brings forth 
death. The preacher becomes increasingly fastidi- 
ous. He is finical in the use of dainty and perfumed 
words. He paints his picture in such delicate tints 
that they cannot be seen by persons seated in the 
back pew. Hypercritical in his taste, he falls into 
various forms of affectation, and, unless arrested 
in his downward course, he sinks into the degrada- 
tion of a rhetorical fop. His sermon is provokingly 
faultless, unhumanly regular, gloriously null. It is 
possible to increase as an artist, and at the same 
time decrease as a preacher. The preacher has lost 
his power when his sermons, like superb works 
of art, stand out before his congregation in the 
marble coldness of finished statues. Work like 
this impoverishes a preacher. He spends time 
upon his sermon which ought to be spent upon him- 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 295 

self. The polishing of sentences is a poor way of 
feeding a man who must preach. The preacher 
needs constant supplies of nourishment, and most 
of his morning hours must be devoted, not to 
sermon building, but to the building of his soul. 
The preparation for the specific sermon may be 
crowded into a few hours, but the preparation of 
himself should go on all the time. Young men, 
ignorant of the laws of soul nutrition, sometimes 
wear themselves thin in a few years by devoting 
themselves too exclusively to the work of sermon 
preparation. They give themselves no time for that 
broad and brooding study, extended over many 
fields, without which the mind deteriorates and 
ceases to be productive. In the earlier years, a 
young preacher must of necessity spend many hours 
each week upon his sermons, for he is as yet an un- 
practised worker, and must learn by laborious effort 
to accumulate material and to give shape and 
edge to his style. But every preacher who de- 
sires to make his pastorate long, must, as rapidly 
as possible, cut down the hours devoted to sermon 
writing, in order that he may have more abundant 
opportunity to work upon himself. He should aim 
so to discipline his powers that by and by he shall 
be able to write a sermon in a single morning. If 



296 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

a man is industrious and keeps his mind and heart 
brimful, there is no reason why he should not, 
after a few years of practice, give shape to his Sun- 
day message between breakfast time and noon. A 
genius now and then will do it in a single hour. 

Let the preacher then work for increased vitality. 
He can do little unless he is a vital man. His work 
is to vitalize, and a man cannot give what he him- 
self does not possess. Like the Master, the preacher 
comes that men may have life, and that they may 
have it more abundantly. A preacher impover- 
ished in his spirit, diminishes the sum of the spirit- 
ual power of the world. He must in all his nature 
be sensitive and life creating. If he cannot feel a 
thrill of joy, no one will be thrilled by any glad 
thing he says. If he cannot suffer an agony, no 
heart will be pierced by any tone which his voice 
can utter. A preacher must be intensely human. 
He must be rich in laughter and in tears. He must 
be able to rejoice and weep, to entertain those mighty 
hopes which make men feel they are immortal, and 
to burn with those flaming enthusiasms which the 
elect of God in every age have known. The 
preacher must avoid all courses of life which lower 
his vitality and cause a shrinkage of the capacities 
of the heart. Humanity must throb full volumed 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 297 

in him. No man can keep himself alive by saying 
true and lovely things. He must live and love and 
suffer. He must purchase with his blood the church 
for which the Messiah died. He must fill up that 
which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ. 

Only a man full of life dares to be himself. 
Emaciated men are timid, and men stunted by 
living exclusively with books dwindle into shadows 
and echoes. It is when one's life is merged in the 
life of the race, and the tide of humanity ebbs and 
floods in one's veins, that one enters into the experi- 
ences of a son of the Highest. Every soul is orig- 
inal. There are no duplicates in the world of 
personality. Every man possesses a combination 
of traits and talents never before approximated, 
and never to be repeated. Every preacher is origi- 
nal who dares to be himself. It matters not that 
he is ordained to preach truths that have been 
preached already ten thousand times. The words 
of the New Testament are ancient but not anti- 
quated, its ideas are antique but not archaic, its 
principles are venerable but not out of date, and the 
one thing needed to cause the words to burn, the 
ideas to glow, and the principles to grip, is a preacher 
who has become a new man in Christ. The oldest 
commonplaces are no longer trite after they have 



298 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

passed through the red blood of a man redeemed. 
The preacher who preaches the old doctrines out of 
his own heart, will rind men listening to him as men 
listened to Paul and Barnabas, and although men 
have been long familiar with the words, they will 
go home saying, "We have never heard it after this 
fashion." 

A man who thinks and works, and grows is 
always interesting. The secret of an extended 
pastorate is a growing man. Young men are some- 
times daunted by the fact that all the truths of 
Christianity are wrinkled and gray-headed. The 
Christian preacher is ordained for the proclamation 
of commonplaces. Brotherhood and service, love 
and forgiveness, hope and mercy, who can make 
these verbal bones live ? Only a living soul can do 
it. A man half dead cannot do it. A man with a 
shrivelled heart cannot do it. Only a man in whom 
Christ dwells richly can give sparkle to the trite, 
and immortal freshness to things that have lost 
their bloom. The Old World needs an old gospel. 
Many things that are new are not true, and all 
things that are true are not new. The Old World 
tragedy goes on as from the beginning, and there 
is no remedy but the one that is old — " Jesus 
Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 299 

the old, old story of the changeless love of the un- 
changing God. It is a commonplace, but it comes 
with the startling flash of a new revelation whenever 
spoken by a tongue which throws into it the fresh 
joy of an understanding and loving heart. It is 
the man that makes the sermon. The man is the 
sermon. That is why it is impossible to print a 
sermon. No sermon has ever yet been printed. 
We print the words, but the words are nothing but 
the skeleton, and the spiritual body of the sermon 
is the personality of the man. One cannot account 
for Peter's power on the day of Pentecost by reading 
the report of Peter's sermon, nor can one account 
for the effect produced by any of the kings of 
Christian speech by a study of what the reporters 
have preserved. Not what the preacher says but 
what he is — this constitutes the sermon. 

To preach with the power of Christ one must 
have something of the heart of Christ. He is 
meek and lowly of heart. Humility is the queen of 
the Christian virtues. In the list of the Beatitudes 
it is Humility to which the first crown is given. 
Unless a man becomes as a little child, he cannot 
enter the kingdom of heaven, and unless he remains 
a little child, he can make no progress therein. 
The man who is always teaching must be evermore 



300 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

a learner. Since he must give many his voice, he 
is under bonds to lend every man his ear. There 
is no one by whom the preacher cannot be taught. 
Everybody knows something which the preacher 
has not yet learned. Those who teach must never 
cease to be pupils. The constant repetition of the 
same words has a tendency to ossify the organs of 
intelligence, and also to close the doors of the heart. 
The work of laying down the law to others some- 
times leaves men dictatorial and unteachable. 
A preacher who has nothing to learn is a man who 
can do little in the building of the church. He 
has lost the child heart, and must get it again before 
the child-loving Christ can work through him. 

In a word, the preacher must obey. There are 
subtle and inexorable laws under whose sway the 
preacher does his work, and every act of disobedience 
subtracts from his power. Laziness, cowardice, 
vanity, impatience, untruthfulness, envy, ambition, 
hypocrisy, meanness — are these not sins which eat 
into the lives of preachers and work havoc in the 
church of God? The Jewish church was wrecked 
by the spiritual deterioration of its leaders, and so 
also was the Mediaeval Christian church. Chris- 
tendom in the eighteenth century was dark, largely 
because of the unfaithfulness of Christian preachers. 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 30I 

Who knows how much of the weakness of the church 
of to-day is due to the disobedience of those who 
preach the gospel? What a stride forward the 
church of God would make if only the men in the 
pulpits were more Christlike men. It is a stroke 
of spiritual genius in Bunyan's immortal allegory, 
the placing of a path to hell starting near the gate 
of heaven. If Judas fell to perdition from the very 
arms of Jesus, let any man who thinks he stands 
take heed lest he fall. The preacher must subject 
himself to rigid and continuous discipline. He 
must walk the way that is narrow. The gate that 
opens into pulpit power is strait. Every moral 
delinquency reports itself in his accent, every 
secret sin comes to judgment in his preaching. 
"What you are speaks so loud" — says Emerson — 
"I cannot hear what you say." It is the preacher 
who is the sermon, and it is this sermon which the 
world remembers. The texts spoken in the pulpit 
are soon forgotten, and so are the ideas, and also 
the illustrations, but the spirit of the man who 
preaches the sermon passes into those who listen, 
and lives on in them after the preacher's lips are 
dust. For Christlike men in all her pulpits, the 
soul of the church pleads with God night and day. 
We have been thinking of how the preacher builds 



302 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

the church, let us not forget how the church builds 
the preacher. The church is the preacher's school 
in which he learns his lessons. The church is the 
preacher's hospital, in which the preacher's maladies 
are healed. The church is the preacher's battle- 
field, on which he learns to fight the foes of God and 
man. The church is the preacher's home, in which 
he gains the Christian virtues and comes into 
possession of the Christian graces. It is while he is 
knitting the hearts of men together that his own 
sympathies are expanded and his own affections are 
enriched. In planning for the church he cultivates 
his mental faculties : reason, foresight, discrimina- 
tion, judgment, imagination; and in working out his 
plan he develops the graces of the heart : longsuffer- 
ing, patience, gentleness, goodness, temperance, 
and meekness. In sacrificing for the church, he 
drinks of the cup of which the Master drank, and 
comes at last to bear in his body the marks of the 
Lord Jesus. Out of the church, texts and ideas come 
for the building of his sermons. Out of the church, 
illustrations come, simple and natural and illumi- 
nating, after the fashion of the illustrations of Jesus. 
The church is the preacher's guardian angel. It 
bears him up, and keeps him from dashing his foot 
against a stone. The vision of the church checks him 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 303 

when tempted to enter on downward courses, and 
braces him in his shadowed hours. Her majesty 
holds him upright, her dignity makes him strong. 
The greatness of the privilege of working for her 
shames him out of cheap ambitions and thrills him 
with desires to be a nobler man. Through the 
church Christ reaches his hands, moulding him. 
Master and servant work together through the labo- 
rious and glorious days. The preacher learns to love 
Christ through the church. The preacher preaches 
to the church, and the church also preaches to the 
preacher. It breaks the bread of life to him. It 
teaches him and admonishes him. It gives him his 
theology. It inspires him and consoles him. It 
trains him and it disciplines him. It administers to 
him the sacraments. It is the servant of the Lord, 
and it does what the Lord himself cannot now do. 
Christ exists no longer in the realm of space and time. 
His home is in the realm of spirit. But his church 
exists in the temporal and spatial world, and through it 
he communicates with those who love him. To serve 
the church is serving him. To love the church is 
loving him. He accepts this love and service, and 
through the church there flows back to those who serve 
and love him the fulness of his grace and benediction. 
The church teaches the minister to pray. No 



304 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

man needs to pray unless he is engaged in an 
impossible undertaking. Not unless he is attempt- 
ing to do that which is beyond the human, is he 
likely to throw himself back into the arms of 
God. The man who strives to build the church 
works at a task demanding strength transcend- 
ing human limits. "Who is sufficient for these 
things?" — this is the question which keeps ever 
sounding through the chambers of the heart, and 
the answer is: "Our sufficiency is from God." 
A builder of the church is of necessity a man of 
prayer. The church brings him again and again 
to his knees. The heights and depths of prayer 
are never known until one carries on his heart the 
sins and sorrows of the Christian people. The 
vastness of the work awes and humbles the most 
successful of Christ's servants. It was when Paul 
thought of the work to which God had called him 
that he described himself as the least of all saints. 
To him the church was a medium of revelation. 
In it he saw reflected the manifold wisdom of God. 
The medium is ever before us, flashing its heavenly 
message into our eyes. It is the church which 
makes it possible for us to believe the teachings of 
the Scriptures. It gives credibility to the doctrine 
that God is indeed a Father, and that he wills that 



THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 305 

all men shall be saved. With the history of the 
church before us, we dare hope for the conversion 
of all nations, and can await undaunted the time 
when the knowledge of God shall cover the earth 
as the waters cover the sea. It is by the love of 
the Christian brotherhood binding hearts together 
across the barriers of nations and races, that we come 
into the deepening assurance that the greatest thing 
in the world is love. It is significant that it was the 
Master-Builder of the first century who wrote with 
the most thrilling confidence of the enduringness 
of faith and hope and love. The churches which 
he built, built him up in the most holy faith. 

The preacher, then, in working for the church 
works for God. To do his work he must be a man of 
God. To have power with men he must incarnate 
the spirit of the Son of God. When he does all things 
through the Christ who strengthens him, he will 
find himself following in the footsteps of the first 
great preacher, and will, like him, be willing to 
suffer the loss of all things that he may gain Christ 
and be found in him. He will have but one ambi- 
tion, ' ' to know Christ, and the power of his resur- 
rection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becom- 
ing conformed unto his death, if by any means he 
may attain unto the resurrection from the dead." 



306 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 

May all of you who have listened to these 
lectures, and all others consecrated to your same 
high calling, have not only the apostle's purpose, 
but also in the final hour his shout of victory : "I 
have fought the good fight, I have finished the 
course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is 
laid up for me the crown." 



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New Work 

Studies in Religion and Theology 

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Worship. — Jesus and the Founding of the Church. — The Making of the 
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